


And Now They Must

by ExploretheEcccentricities



Series: Or So They Thought [4]
Category: Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure (Cartoon)
Genre: Bullying, FLASHBACKS-may contain triggering or disturbing content. Not explicit, Feudalism, Flashbacks, Fluff and Angst, Gen, He's a teen ya'll, Historical Inaccuracy, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Implied/Referenced Torture, Lies, angry mobs, but heavily implicit, no beta we die like men, one swear word
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2020-04-21
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:47:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 52,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23403223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ExploretheEcccentricities/pseuds/ExploretheEcccentricities
Summary: Everything is still sore. It's bending and mending because it's been broken before.Sequel to "And So He Sought."
Relationships: Eugene Fitzherbert | Flynn Rider & Varian, Quirin & Varian (Disney), Rapunzel & Varian (Disney)
Series: Or So They Thought [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1639714
Comments: 115
Kudos: 174





	1. Crushing: So They Can Know

**Author's Note:**

> Welp, I'm finally in lockdown. I have absolutely no reason to not be angsty.
> 
> You are all the best. Thank you all for your kind and thoughtful comments on the previous works! They really keep me going. And the suggestions were...MWAHAHAHA every reason I love this fandom.
> 
> This work will have TWO chapters, though the series will have several more works to come. This particular part is quite plot-heavy, and may generally have less feels than my previous works. It's because I needed it to fit with how I've structured the story (there's a sequence now, I promise), and because I'm desperate to take my mind off things. I'm alone on lockdown and don't know when I'm going to see my family again.
> 
> You may notice I repeat certain phrases from the previous works, and this one is structured slightly different. Know that it's intentional. You'll find out in chapter 2-which is already done, and was by far one of my most favorite things to write!  
> Sorry for the wait. And sorry if characters are a little out of character! At this point nothing is canon; just assume it's taken place after Rapunzel's Return and none of the other episodes have happened.
> 
> The POVs shift a lot.
> 
> Also: just know that I do not like Andrew.

The first beams of the new day scintillates across the horizon and over the slumbering world, rising into the sky and crushing each ray of darkness with wistful bliss.

In the Kingdom of Corona, people awake to the crow of the rooster, the delightful giggles of restless children, the admonishing reprimands of impatient parents, the burning glow of the sun shining through their windows to gaze peacefully as it shone everywhere on the enlivened earth.

Everywhere but one.

In the Kingdom of Corona, one child awakes not to any strong light, nor any gentle sound-but to a burning, crushing ache that settles heavily into his limbs and sears laboriously into his being. The pit of hopelessness and despair that today was not a day so different from yesterday, nor tomorrow.

It is strange. Varian assumes he should be able to sleep. After all, here, underneath a sturdy roof, cocooned in the arms of one he loves most, the world seems brighter and warmer than he remembers it to be. There’s no shackles clawing at his raw skin, no chains weighing his every bone into the earth, no grueling labor to pass his time underneath the ever-glaring sun.

He does not need to gauge for answers, he does not need to fret over the rocks or the amber or his sealed fate in the abyss of nothingness. For once, Varian does not need to worry about what he does not know.

He wants nothing more than to drift off into the sweet grasps of slumber, but he does know that he will not be able to sleep without waking his father up for another horrid nightmare. So he remains curled up against Quirin, wistfully watching the dark bags sag underneath his father’s eyes, the pacifying rhythm of his even breaths-the very real reminder, above everything he dreams and fears, that his father is alive, and free, and _here_ , with him.

Then Quirin stirs, and Varian quickly squeezes his eyes shut.

He hears the almost inaudible rustling of bedsheets, then a large, warm hand resting heavily on his forehead. “You’ve grown.” The voice is tender and trained with a gentle vulnerability that is meant only for Varian’s slumbering ears, seeping out hesitantly yet meaningfully from underneath the depths of those pained orbs as they crawl over Varian’s sobbing form in the darkest of nights and the hardest of days, trace over his jutting cheekbones, rub away the tension in his forehead as he shifts sharply in his sleep. “You’ve grown so much, and where was I?” The vulnerability welds into something darker, softer, more sincere-smothered like a gentle flame in a bellowing breeze.

Varian pretends to remain asleep as he feels his father tighten his arms around him, pressing his small head against the much larger, much warmer neck. He does not want to open his eyes right now-he does not want to levigate nor look at the peaceable yet powerful sorrow alight in his father’s eyes, which undoubtedly hover directly above his own face, judging by the proximity of his breath on his nose.

But then the soft fingers in his hair are accompanied by a trickling dampness, and the powerful heartbeat he is pressed against is accompanied by slight, imperceptible tremors, so Varian has to change his mind, overcome by immense sorrow and guilt.

“Dad? Daddy?”

Quirin gasps, loosening his hold only slightly so that he can cup Varian’s chin. His uneasy eyes are still red and watery, his uneven breaths are still fractured by sniffles, and Varian has never felt more awful at the sight because Quirin is crying for him, because of him. “I’m sorry. Did I wake you?”

Varian shakes his head, blinking rapidly for fear that Quirin would see the tears in his eyes too- know he was still hurting, too.

“Are you ready to tell me yet?”

Varian shakes his head again, biting his lip fiercely.

Quirin doesn’t sigh in disappointment or frustration as Varian expects, doesn’t turn away like he should and give up like he could. Instead, a small, soft smile graces his lips, and a new light shines in his eyes, much more easy to bear and harder to share. Then his father’s hand is cupping his cheek again, pressing him against the furnace of heat again, and Varian finally drifts off.

…

The weight of self-contempt is crushing as Quirin silently makes his way out of bed. He wants to respect Varian’s choice. He knows he must. But it is become increasingly difficult to stare into those un-Varian eyes, fret about hurt-Varian’s health, scramble to speak to the now more silent, sepulchral new-Varian. It is difficult to do that and remain seated, unable to do anything else but replay the harrowing nightmare behind his eyelids, over and over again in a discordant cycle of unparalleled, nauseating terror.

He has put off his involvement in all of the renovations Old Corona is due to undertake. Occasionally, some villagers would stop by in the evenings and consult him on certain matters, but that’s about it. Quirin can’t bring himself to leave Varian alone now, and the villagers - though not knowing about Varian’s attempt - accept his word without question. Quirin hopes it will stay this way-he hopes someone will not broach the topic of Varian’s treason, or why the boy is still here with him.

So saying Quirin is surprised is a mere understatement when he hears a confident knock on the door, followed by hasty whispering. He cautiously opens the door to find one bubbly princess accompanied by a slightly embarrassed man who mirrored Flynn Rider in those books his son had once devoured.

Seeing Princess Rapunzel up close, even so soon after she has freed him from amber, almost makes Quirin tremble-the smile softer than her linen, face brighter than the sun she represented, determination steadfast and compassion warmly glittering in her eyes. It was strange- it made him feel as though she could make things right, even if she had no knowledge of what was happening.

The aura of energy surrounding the two youngsters seems to falter upon seeing his face.

Flustered, Eugene averts his gaze for a moment before rubbing his neck and sheepishly smiling at the man, whereas Rapunzel practically bounces on her toes as though meeting him was the most elated thing she has ever done.

“Hello, Quirin sir!” She chirps respectfully. “We haven’t heard from Varian in a while, so thought we would just stop by to check in and see if he’s ok…”

The ecstasy of her sentence fades gradually with the deepening frown on Quirin’s face. He contemplates the thought-these were Varian’s friends. Well, they had been his friends, before everything that had transpired. He knew Rapunzel had been the one to free him-and advocate for his stay in the palace as he recovered. It would be rude to turn her down.

“Ehem, yes. Varian is sleeping. He…he’s been ill, lately.”

Rapunzel’s face falls in worry, while Eugene’s seems to lighten with relief. “Ah, see blondie? Varian’s fine. He’s just under the weather. We’ll check back with him when-“

He is abruptly elbowed by the annoyed princess.

Quirin witnesses another flash of concern, brief and bereft of any cheeriness, before Rapunzel purses her lips. “Oh dear, that’s awful! I should have made a get well soon card.” She pouts at her already overflowing basket of flowers, pastries, and hand-decorated stencils.

Quirin chuckles light-heartedly. He has never really pondered Varian’s taste in friends-considering his son didn’t actually have friends beyond that raccoon- but it seems that Varian was blessed. “Oh, that’s fine. I’m sure he’ll appreciate it.”

“Can we meet him?”

Quirin’s smile vanishes, and Eugene shoulders her in alarm.

“Blondie, I really don’t think-“

Rapunzel’s ecstatic energy has now dampened considerably, and her eyes are now locked on Quirin’s own. The man freezes under her expecting gaze, the dry lump in his throat suffocating.

“I’m sorry, Quirin.” Rapunzel speaks sincerely in an uncharacteristically somber tone. “I know we’re making you uncomfortable. But-but the last time I left Varian for so long, he ended up angry and hurt. I don’t ever want him to feel that way again.” She looks down, and her eyes lid over with an almost indiscernible glimpse of sorrow, much to Quirin’s utter shock. He feels like he’s violating something purposeful, a tender and reverent sanctity that was reserved only for his son-and from the Crown Princess of Corona, no less. If he turns her down now, it will be as though he’s wasted this rare moment-wasted this rare exposure to her rare display of sobriety.

Perhaps Princess Rapunzel and he weren’t so different. Perhaps, as someone who cared for Varian too, she deserved to know the truth. Perhaps she could help him find the truth.

Rapunzel sighs again- deeply, dolefully. Quirin is taken aback that she respectfully accepts the answer of his silence, wondering whether she knows she can simply order her way in. “When he wakes up, tell him I came by.” She turns, prepared to leave, and her boyfriend almost immediately joins her.

Quirin’s eyes flit between the two. They had come concerned for Varian, because of Varian. They were willing to respect his boundaries. They were willing to make amends. His son did not have to be alone-he did not have feel like he was alone. The princess and her…consort could help make things better, help make _them_ better.

“Actually-“ Quirin states, tentatively. “You can wait until he wakes up. You came all this way, after all.”

Rapunzel turns, and slowly, a small, delighted grin graces her face, realization and relief bursting in her bright green eyes. Eugene seems surprised too-not disappointed, but suspicious.

“Thank you so much!” She outstretches her arms as if she were to hug him, but then thinks otherwise and hastily withdraws just as quickly, sheepishly smiling as she carefully treads into the house.

Eugene follows, eyes still tracing Quirin’s own as though searching for deception, a reason to distrust. Quirin feigns a steady gaze until the eye contact breaks, and almost sighs in relief.

Quirin decides they must know.

…

The oppressive weight of the staunch, melancholy atmosphere crushes at Rapunzel’s unprepared senses in arduous waves, her smile faltering slightly as she follows Quirin up the stairs. It reminds her of something-everything about Varian’s house, from the dim lighting of the empty tables to the unheeded dust gathering on the shelves, imbues her with a different, heftier nostalgia she cannot quite place. Trying to distract herself from the despondency that threatens to tug at her memory, Rapunzel fiddles with the basket, donning her cheery facade.

“Oh, I can’t wait to show him the new copper-plated alembic I got him!” Unnerved that Eugene’s expression was reflecting a similar unease, Rapunzel almost snaps at him. “Eugene, I told you we should have gotten a bigger one!”

Eugene blinks, and he seems to understand her discomfort as well, smoothly joining in. “And searched the market for two more hours? Blondie, this is the best we can do. Relax, he’s probably thrilled he even got presents.”

Rapunzel nearly gasps at the flippant comment. “Eugene!”

Blushing and stammering, Eugene quickly turns to Quirin, who’s stopped in his tracks to raise a questioning brow. “I-I mean, because markets are all out these days, and the Day of Hearts is still weeks away! Present season is-is just _awful_ , isn’t it?”

Thankfully, Varian’s door arrives at that moment. Quirin stops and looks to them, his gaze heavy and alight with a subtle solemnity that elicits the eerie apprehension to return swiftly and strongly, scorching into Rapunzel’s conscience like a lingering, overtly sweet smell.

“Please stay silent.” He croaks, hesitating before he opens the door.

Rapunzel and Eugene walk in, eyes immediately landing on the bed before them.

Rapunzel cannot help but notice that Quirin veers off to the side, almost awkwardly, as though he is not sure how to proceed and expects them to take charge.

Taking the uncomfortable cue despite how it prods at her, Rapunzel turns to the small, slumbering figure curled up under the blankets. She realizes she has never seen Varian in such a vulnerable state before-so oblivious to the world, so unassuming of and for it. The face she knows-the boy she has known to hold such vehemence, ebullient and ever-animated- is now slack, his closed eyes lingering in another, more peaceful realm.

“Aw, he’s so cute when he sleeps!” She attempts, unable to stop her eyes from wandering and scrutinizing the young face in the hope that she’ll find what’s troubling Quirin so. There’s something wrong. Varian’s cheeks no longer hold the healthy blush, so pasty with pallor that his freckles practically illuminate from where they stand out. His eyes are closed in a manner that is tight and unyielding, not the soft and unassuming way children’s eyes usually close when they sleep.

“Is that…blood?” Eugene inquires with alarm.

The shock of the sight jostles her with a nauseating instinct-the dark red splotch stands out like a splinter against his pallid and otherwise smooth skin, only slightly obscured by the tangles of hair. She almost reaches for her own hair-almost, before she is riddled with the cold reminder that she cannot heal what has been hurt.

“Varian isn’t sick. Varian’s hurt.” Rapunzel instead clarifies, slowly as though she wants to delay how the realisation will bear down upon her already burdensome guilt and only feed the awful apprehension that has begun to ignite her concern.

Quirin sadly stares at both of them as they turn to him expectantly. He silently strides forward and gingerly curls his fingers around the blanket. Slowly as the doctor did, slowly as he once did, the man peels it off, slowly revealing the entire array of bright red gashes sprawled over Varian’s back.

This time, Rapunzel can barely withhold a soft gasp, unexacting and unexpecting. It clogs her throat, sets her every fear alight and fleeting.

“What-what happened?” Rapunzel asks, breathless as she stares into his wounded eyes. For a moment, she is staring at her own father-she is pleading and reaching to no avail for eyes that have sealed away sorrow, sober with secrecy, surreptitious yet sincere all the same. They are eyes that have held and helped and hurt in more ways than one, followed every twitch of discomfort and etch of pain on a being they loved dearly and fiercely.

Yet somehow, they are so different. They are eyes that have beheld tragedy and bested misfortune, bravely stared at hopelessness in the face, locked paths with strange, searing pains and stranger yet smaller delights. And somehow, even after seeing him shakily embrace his son moments after being freed from a year-long coma in paralyzing amber, Rapunzel finds a newer, deeper respect for this man heavy in her heart and crushing to her conscience.

“Princess.” He addresses her, tone low and heavy with gravity. “I-When I was told of Varian’s…story, the good king offered to send him to an asylum.”

“He-he told me it was best, because my boy needed help. Help that he couldn’t get from kind friends, or safe prisons, or even me. Something was wrong with my boy. And-and I thought it would work. I thought I hadn’t been a good father to him. I thought-I hoped-that at least in the asylum, there would be doctors and nurses who could fix what I never could, what I had never understood-what I was now to see the consequences of.” He inhaled shakily. “He told me he was fine. He told me he didn’t want to go. But I thought I knew better. I should have known better.”

“Quirin, you’re not making any sense- "

The man continues, as though his river of words have already chosen their course, a compulsive torrent that cannot stop pouring once allowed to leak. “He told me to believe him. He promised. He promised he was fine! And I _believed_ him. I let him run away. I let him slip away.”

“What do you mean?” She whispers in confusion, cold dread pooling into her stomach and apprehension ringing in her ears. She leans forward slightly with intense attentiveness.

Quirin inhales shakily, the words crushing Rapunzel’s heart as they leave his mouth. “Varian tried to kill himself.”

Rapunzel gasps, hands flying to her mouth and face paling instantly. The unadulterated horror- captured in her eyes and forever sown into how her lips tighten with tremors she can not contain, how her eyes well with silent tears that she can not conceal - incites Quirin with simultaneous shame and humility. He feels as though he can shatter glass with the frailty he now harbors whenever Varian looks up to him with un-Varian eyes, when the Princess of Corona stands before him in an un-princess manner, when he stands here, conferring his son’s condition because he is un-fatherly and unequipped and un-enough to handle this awful ordeal by himself.

Quirin’s next breaths shudder with the crushing force of this guilt and self-reproach. “He tried-He was going to jump off, but then I came, and caught him. I caught him but he hit his head so I had to take care of him but he wouldn’t talk and I needed to know, I wanted to know why and he wouldn’t tell me anything-“

“Quirin.” Rapunzel’s voice lowers into a bare, hoarse whisper, threaded and weaved with a trembling hand and an unsure aim, a silent assurance smooth and warm to his ears. “Quirin, calm down.”

“Varian woke up in his sleep, crying, thrashing, screaming about and against something that wasn’t there, not anymore. And-and whenever I looked at him like this, I would be reminded that he was still fighting against something I couldn’t see, something I had never been able to protect him from, something I may never know.” Something that hurt him, that devoured all the goodness in his child and left only a shell of a person that Varian was not.

“And…when I finally get the doctor…He…” Quirin suddenly looks pale, physically drained, and Rapunzel considers reaching her arms out to steady the man because he looks like he is going to fall. “He’s hurt so badly.”

“How badly?” She wants to capture every word she yearns and dreads to hear, encase it for eternity, for the boy who she had.

And so he tells them.

Quirin tells them about Varian on the windowsill. He tells them about Varian in the wheelbarrow. He tells them about Varian in his arms, in his sleep, clawing and kicking for a way out. He tells them about Varian in pain and plight, feeling as though he’s peeling away layers of himself, of a part of Varian he was not supposed to know about.

What was once crushing in his heart became swift and graceful in the air. His words now carry weight, but they’re not lifting it off of his heart…they’re swinging into and digging painfully into others’, finding their own direction and transforming the steady stream of his usually fluid speech into a turbulent outpour with no ostensible reign, no regard for reason, no reason to hold back and hide away and _hurt alone_ anymore.

By the end of it, Rapunzel has her head ducked in shame, eyes aghast and glistening with overflowing tears, and Eugene is as pale as a sheet of snow, lips slightly apart and face twisted into a disconcerted frown as though he’s tasted something bitter.

Rapunzel is the first to gather the courage, clearing her throat despite the wavering tone her voice undertook. “Why-why didn’t you tell us earlier? My father could have-“

“King Frederic was told before I called in a doctor.” Quirin insists kindly, and Rapunzel wonders how skilled he must be to conceal the accusatory impatience that undoubtedly broiled within him. “Which is why I’m surprised he didn’t tell you.”

Rapunzel’s face contorts. “He didn’t tell me.” Indignity and raw, unadulterated anger suddenly floods into her every sense, overwhelms her sight. Rapunzel’s world spins unpleasantly before halting abruptly. And then, a hiss of estranged contempt. “He didn’t tell me _a thing_.”

Just then, Varian inhales deeply and stirs, brows twitching and nose wrinkling. Eugene turns to him for a moment before nodding silently to Rapunzel.

The princess sniffles, hastily wiping away the tears before gently placing an arm on Quirin’s shoulder, the other nervously folded to her side. “Can we talk? In private?”

The man and the princess make to leave, not noticing Varian’s eyes snap open or Eugene’s unsettled yelp as the boy immediately lifts his upper half off the bed. Rapunzel needs to ask Quirin something far more important.

Rapunzel must get to the bottom of this.

…

Ever since her freedom from Gothel, Rapunzel had thought she was born to be royalty. Royalty was governance, and governing meant helping, supporting, protecting people. Royalty was her, gazing down as the kingdom basked in the sun, as parents spun their children and children tossed coins into wishing wells. It was looking for the gleam of their eyes, pure and arrant with joy, brighter and stronger and warmer than the thousand lanterns she sees on her birthday as the drift around her world like a bedazzling array of stars in the coat of night. For Rapunzel, nothing was more precious than the promise of Corona thriving happily under her rule one day.

The necessary need to uphold this optimism was crushingly burdensome, but Rapunzel was sure that if she tried hard enough, no one’s eyes would look at her with accusation, betrayal, or despair ever again.

Now, however, Rapunzel is struck, and it elicits another unbidden onslaught of tears that blur her vision, crumble her resolve, tearing at her chest like an unsettling beast.

It is the eyes of a father who was hurt…hurt because of the actions _her_ father had allowed.

“I-I can talk to my father.” It sounds like a desperate clasp at a reassurance she never knew could waver, a resort she has only ever used once to bail Cassandra out of her sentence. She is used to people reacting to this phrase with stunned silence, reassurance, relief even. It hurts Rapunzel worse when the words seem to have no effect on the hunched figure of the stoic man in front of her. “I’ll talk to the king. Surely-surely this can’t be right. His sentence could not have allowed for _any_ of this.” She is speaking to herself in an empty room, the man absorbed in his own world. “He will-we will find the perpetrators. Quirin, did Varian tell you anything about a guard, a prisoner, a member of the palace staff? Did he talk to you about what had happened?”

Quirin slowly shakes his head, his eyes pursed shut as though he is grimacing in pain. “I-I don’t think he even remembers, Princess. Varian hasn’t been himself since the attempt.”

“Someone must have went again Da- the king’s orders.” She hastily pulls out, desperate for a sign. “Some crook must have hurt Varian without the king knowing. We’ll get the answers, Quirin. I promise”

Quirin’s head remains bowed, eyes still closed. There is a slight tremor in his figure, as though he is attempting to withhold more sobs.

“Quirin. I’m so sorry.” Rapunzel wishes for it to convey all she feels, but she knows it only sounds like a wispy, hollow rasp, only less stable than how she strains to withhold her own tears.

Quirin shakes his head, his eyes trained on the floorboard. “No, Princess, I’m sorry. I never…If I had been a better father to him-if I had loved him like he deserved before it was too late…” His breath hitches as though caught in his throat, and his voice falters again, quivering with the threat of a new bout of sobs.

Rapunzel immediately offers the pleasant thing to hear, the nice thing to say. “Quirin, Varian always knew how much you loved him.”

“Love is all I can offer for him, all that I have left to give. But-“ Quirin pauses, and Rapunzel notices him gulp thickly, lips pursed as though he is withholding a dry sob. “There’s-there’s a sadness…a darkness in him, that I cannot love away.” It was a cruel, unresponsive emptiness in Varian’s eyes that gleamed without hesitance even after Quirin had rocked him to sleep- a strange, unfathomable force that coruscated chills down Quirin’s spine and unnerved him with their burning weight. “And-and I want to be able to love it away. But if it can’t be fixed by love, can it be fixed at all?”

“Yes.” Rapunzel immediately answers on reflex, but for a different reason, much to Quirin’s surprise and her own shock. The man’s head snaps up, gazing into her with full attention, glistening with hope. The pressure to ascertain and fulfill what her subject so desperately seeks is debilitating, and Rapunzel instinctively reaches for the right thing to say, the only thing she can say. As her words trickle out of her tongue, she feels them drift away like petals of a dying flower in the new spring breeze, more callous than cathartic, reaching deep and stretching painfully into a part of her heart that she has locked away, looked away from, left for dead. “Love doesn’t…fix things, Quirin. It makes them easier to bear, quicker to heal. It can’t ever…reverse what’s already hurt. And-however much this knowledge does hurt, you need to accept-“ She swallows away the painful lump in her throat at the sight of tears desolately glittering in his eyes. “-That Varian is going to be different, because he’s still trying to heal from that hurt. And he needs someone to understand that. He needs someone to be there for him when he realizes that. He needs someone to pick him up when he falls and believe in him when no one would at all.” Then, it’s as though she is radiating with a knowledge she never know she possessed. The words assemble and flow effortlessly from her, deep into the man in front of her. “There’s nothing to fix, because there’s nothing broken. It’s all just sore-it’s just healing, and changing, and becoming better because it’s been hurt before.”

The words finally empty out of her, leave her drained and light with relief, as though a burden has been lifted from the troubling conundrum of questions that still crush upon and prod insistently in the back of her head.

Quirin’s lips tighten and twitch, bringing his fingers to pinch his nose as his eyes squeeze shut. He hunches as though exhausted, and his voice is weak, cracked as he finally allows the despondency to seep into his words, like a wound finally being exposed to air, being allowed to breathe and bleed. “My boy needs help.”

Rapunzel bristles, and in that moment, she wants nothing more than to hug this man like she had her father when she found him in such a state-it reminded her of a mountain bowed against the turbulent wind, crumbling from its foundations. But she has a greater job to do, a greater part to play. She must.

Instead, Rapunzel smiles, softly yet sadly, content yet concerned. It will be alright. Quirin is stronger than this. Varian is stronger than this. And now, she must be strong for both of her subjects. “Your boy needs you.”

…

“How have you been?”

Varian doesn’t look up despite how the sudden voice startles him out of his reverie. Unlike most times, where he could effortlessly turn away from his father without meaning to seem callous, Varian realizes the same charade is impossible to maintain with Eugene. Eugene’s voice is smooth, yet his stare is crushing, hesitant with a vigilant circumspection. It’s almost as though he is intentionally fishing for things to talk about, merely to distract him from the undoubtedly more important thing that Rapunzel and his father were talking about. Varian finds himself staring down at how he has folded his hands in his lap, despite wanting to run after the safety of his father’s large, retreated form.

Why was the princess and Eugene in his room? Why did the princess take Dad out of his room? Why was Eugene in here with him?

Quiet shuffling, and then the soft padding of the basket on the table. “Rapunzel sent these.”

Varian nods slowly, hoping Eugene would take the silent thanks and leave. If he leaves, that would mean Rapunzel would leave, and so would his sickening apprehension, his measly doubts, his unnerving and constant worry at all of the possible things they could be talking about. Dad wasn’t talking about him, was he? Dad had said he would wait until he was ready. Dad had promised that he could take his time in telling him. Varian had hoped that meant Dad wouldn’t tell _anyone_. Of course, hope had never really been kind to him.

Eugene fumbles apprehensively, seeming unaccustomed to beside manner and scrambling desperately for something, anything to say. “Don’t worry. I’m sure she’ll get through to him.”

At first, Varian blinks, staring up at Eugene in puzzlement. “What do you mean?”

Eugene frowns back. “Rapunzel will talk to the king. You know, for the trial.”

“Trial?” Varian snaps to attention, his eyes scarily serious, the panic and apprehension glistening sharply in the depths of his irises. “What trial?”

“Well, we have to get to the bottom of this.” The open ended phrase is self-explanatory, spoken with the air of confidence in every obvious fact Eugene prides himself on knowing. Yet, gazing back at those apprehensive, perplexed eyes, the phrase ends up sounding more like a question, an unsure statement about an uncertain thing.

Varian’s heart sinks with horror and mortification. Oh God. They knew.

“No.” The word first drifts out like the first raindrop before a hurricane, a leak in the floodgates, a broken whisper from a breaking dam ready to burst forth and wreak havoc. All he can see now is Rapunzel’s face, no doubt viciously twisted in vexation and disgust, eyes burning down on him with inexplicable yet irrefutable hatred. What must Rapunzel think of him?

The sorrowful glint in Varian’s eyes softens, rekindled by a different, more vulnerable fear distant in his mind’s eye, approaching from a horizon only he could see. Before Eugene can process this small, infrequent display of sadness, the glint intensifies, sharpens into panic. “No, no, no!”

“Kid…?” The name sounds foreign and undeserving, unbelonging and unwilling on his tongue. It feels wrong - all of this feels wrong. Eugene is not sure what to ask, what to expect, what to say.

“She can’t. “ Had it been a year ago, Eugene would have assumed Varian sounded petulant, childishly frustrated over something urgent they couldn’t understand. “She can’t…talk to him.”

“Oh?” Eugene attempts to control the shrill concern that laces his heightened voice, the stunning apprehension that Varian knows something he doesn’t-a foreboding possibility and inequitable risk, something that can harm Rapunzel again. He forces himself to continue, voice lowered with strained yet weaning patience. “Why not?”

“Because there’s nothing to talk about.” Varian knows he should not cry in front of Eugene, not make himself look even more pathetic and weak than the man undoubtedly thinks he is. He hadn’t meant for it go this far…he didn’t even know if he could ever let go.

“Ahem, sorry kiddo. But there kind of is.” Eugene chuckles half-heartedly in a manner he hopes it convincing and not condescending. He is used to people taking his humor in stride, detracting their attention away from the grave seriousness that robs them of the smiles they could be showing, the laughs they could be sharing. So when Varian only stares back at him, skeptically and dare he say _judgmentally_ , Eugene cannot help but clear his throat awkwardly, attempting to collect his whimsical thoughts.“No one signed up for-well…” He gestures to Varian’s entire slumped form. “This.” At Varian’s dejected, crestfallen expression, Eugene feels a protruding spike of guilt rush to ram itself into his gut. “Oh, no, that’ s not what I meant!” Eugene frantically speaks, hushed and softer. He raises his arms, though he doesn’t know why. Maybe he wants to show he means no harm. Maybe he wants to hug the broken thing in front of him and wish it better. Maybe he’s just being an idiot and should get his act together before Varian (rightfully) decides to just not listen to him. Why would Varian listen to him, anyway? Why was _he_ here, talking to Varian?

_Right. No more careless responses._ “We just…thought the king would do better. We never-we never could have thought that he would allow any of this. I’m sorry.” “Justice isn’t easy to win, but now that we’re here, we’ll take care of it. I promise.”

Varian gawks at him in open bewilderment, now thoroughly confused. “What are you talking about?” Varian asks.

“We’re gonna find that psycho and turn him in to the king.” Eugene quickly replies, determination alight in his eyes as he smiles proudly, triumphantly.

The unbearable anxiety flees Varian body as quickly as it flooded, leaving him drained and breathless with relief. So Rapunzel didn’t hate him…yet. He curls in on himself, trying to steady what has been shaken. Varian instantly regrets the words as they leave his mouth. “That’s not going to work.”

Eugene sighs. “Why not?”

“Because-because justice is for people who deserved better! For people who have been wronged.”

Varian uncurls from his withdrawn position, attempting to relay the urgent distress. But his voice is weak with a sorrow that imperceptibly tightens his lips and furrows his brow into a pained grimace, as though he had to force himself to say what he had- as if he hadn’t intended to speak at all.

Suddenly, Eugene feels struck with an enervating wave of simultaneous guilt and sheer incredulity, and he stares back at Varian with his mouth agape and eyes wide in disbelief. “…And you don’t think what happened to you was wrong?”

“It’s not wrong if I deserved it.” Varian mutters softly, though his voice is dry, exhausted, as though he has run out of hope to smother. The darkness in his eyes looms like an oblique shadow over the previous outpour of emotion, clings to the rim like an empty orb. “People like me deserve to hurt.”

“People like you need _help_.” Eugene blurts out before wishing he had phrased that more delicately.

The effect is unexpected and instantaneous. The earnest, demure fragility in Varian’s eyes vanishes, his tone replenishing any resolve that had drained at Eugene’s comment and instead donning a fiercely moved countenance.

“I don’t need _help_.” Varian’s voice is heightened but not shrill, uncertain but not unrestrained-it strives to retain a definitive strength, as though it still bears a tremulous weight, but is willing to leap the extra mile, take one more chance at being heard before it is pushed down again. The word is spat out like an unheeded curse,a disgusting formality, and the way Varian hisses it, misconstrues it, carries with and in the hope that dauntingly challenges Eugene. Varian’s words are just that-trying to carry the unbearable burden in short bursts, before stopping to allow the despair to crush him from time to time. “I don’t need-I don’t want people to get involved. I got what I deserved, I learned my lesson-I’m better now. Please keep it that way. Please…leave me alone.”

“Why? So you can take this out on yourself?”

The stunned silence almost subconsciously gives Eugene permission to continue.

“Look, kid. I may not be a genius, but anything that makes you want to jump out of a window cannot possibly be what you classify as ‘better.’” Eugene feels Varian’s eyes burning into him-those impressionable, light, hopeful eyes, now clouded and ashen with a dose of reality. “You…you are not better. You are not ok. You need help. You deserve help.” Eugene hope the conviction in his claim is more apparent than he feels it to be. Comfort was not his strongest suit.

“No, I don’t.” Varian whispers, but the admission is tumultuous and low, as though he is talking more to himself than Eugene. “I deserve to die. I deserve to hurt for what I’ve done. Punishments are supposed to make you hurt.”

“Punishments are supposed to make people better. Did any of this make you better, Varian?”

Varian doesn’t respond, so Eugene leans forward and clasps his hands around Varian’s own. It’s not a comforting gesture, Eugene attempts to convince himself. It’s not because he wants to show Varian he care. It’s not because the very sight of the kid staring out of this very window unsettles him to the core. “Varian. Why are people punished?”

“So-so they don’t do it again?”

“Exactly, Varian. To teach lessons. To discourage people from doing it. To send a message, remind you of what’s right and wrong. What exactly did this-“ Eugene points at Varian’s bare arm, littered with even cuts of dried blood. “-This pain, do? Did it send a message? Did it ward off all would-be child sociopaths from a potential life of crime? Did it make you hate us any less?”

“It taught me that I’m worthless.” Varian grumbles despondently, eyes flitting in an attempt to avert from locking with Eugene.

Eugene fights every instinct he has to slam his fist down into the wall in piqued vexation, tell Varian he’s wrong, maybe even shake him by the shoulders and tell him to shut up- until he realized that Varian wasn’t Lance. Instead, he thinks of Rapunzel. What would Rapunzel do? “And was that any good? Would that have deterred you?”

Varian stares up at him, slightly confused at where he was going with this. Eugene rephrases again.

“When did you realize you had gone wrong?”

“Before.” Varian speaks slowly, as though the realisation is slowly dawning on him, seeping through his every inch of skin and tingling with sickening anticipation. His voice is distant-the glint in his eyes is distant, and he stares off into this distance, unseeing and unperceiving to the world. Then, Varian closes his eyes slowly, brows furrowed in concentration, and Eugene wonders if the memory is somehow entrenched behind Varian’s eyelids, wistfully unraveling over and over again in the dreams that fracture his sleep and the days that wean his hope, when he wishes to see nothing at all. After a deafening silence, a perceptible heaviness settles into his young face-an unmoving, unsettling seriousness that leaves his eyes gaunt in their sockets and sallow cheeks drained of all tension. “Before the trial. Before I was sentenced. I was scared.”

“Why did you join Andrew?”

“B-Because I was hurt.” Varian replies automatically, stuttering insecurely at the unexpectedly fast pace at which he was answering these questions. “I wanted it to stop, and it wasn’t going to stop if I didn’t do anything.” The voice is still, somber and simple with reason- satisfied with this sole reason. Yet the scrimmage in Varian’s face remains to twist his features into a troubled scowl, as though he’s attempting to suppress an agony that wishes to be heard, to be seen in the shadows of his eyes and crinkles etched into his forehead.

“Varian. Do you know why things like this-“ He traces the bruise on Varian’s wrist, choosing to keep his eyes trained on the disturbing spot of blood on his head. “Happen?”

Varian shakes his head, curious and attentive.

“They happen because some psychopath chose to hurt you, not because you tried to hurt anyone else. And you don’t deserve to hurt.”

Varian doesn’t answer. He does, however, burst into tears, frightening Eugene out of his wits.

He hates it when kids cry! It makes him want to cry, and he had an ugly crying face!

But Varian is still trembling uncontrollably, small, torn mewls shivering in the silence they choose to hold and shattering along with Eugene’s last resolve. And, conveniently, Eugene still does not know the answer he came to seek.

Eugene knows he should ask the kid. He knows he should. But when he parts his lips, something else escapes entirely.

“You’re a good kid.” He whispers, rumbles pleasantly. The last time he had spoke those words, Varian’s good intentions had gotten them. The last time he had spoken this to Varian, the boy had looked at him with worried, self-conscious eyes-eyes that had once idolized him, read every page of Flynn Rider. “You’re-you’re a smart kid, with great intentions. You didn’t make the best choices, but you always tried. You’ve _already_ tried to make things right, Varian. You’ve been punished enough. You’ve hurt enough.”

Varian’s eyes open only slightly, groggily, filled to the brim with those heavy tears and heavier sorrows. He squints through the blur, latched and locked onto Eugene’s every word as though they are an anchor only he can reach, a light only he can see, before he must succumb to the safe and familiar emptiness that shields him from the world. And Eugene finds himself anchored, too.

_Oh, to hell with it._

Eugene’s hands find Varian’s shoulders, squeezing them gently before he pulls the boy close to his chest. His fingers find thick, grimy hair he has never touched, stroke the pasty skin of a cheek he has never wiped tears from. The ordeal is harrowing yet humbling, and Eugene finds himself leaning back, taking Varian with him so that the boy can comfortably lean against his chest.

“Oh, hey now…”

Varian only shudders more forcefully, the tremors prodding Eugene’s skin like a child, consistently tugging at him for attention. Eugene will never know why he even considered what he was about to do.

“Look, k-Varian.” Eugene stumbles. “I-As far as always being made to feel like the bad guy goes, I know what you’re going through.”

“No, you can’t!” Varian’s shrill, unstable cry abruptly interjects, and Eugene’s heart wilts. “You can’t possibly know, because you-you weren’t hurt! You didn’t make everyone hurt! You weren’t weak!”

“Varian. Who says I don’t hurt?” Eugene’s voice is low, heavy with solemnity. Varian doesn’t respond, so Eugene feels he must continue. “Do you think…I don’t hurt, looking at the orphans on the streets, the prisoners in the gallows? Do you think I’ve forgotten the things I’m not proud of? The things I had to do because I wanted to escape my world of pain?”

“It’s not the same.” Varian’s voice is muffled, interspersed with sobs he strains to contain between each distressed wheeze. He keeps his fingers fastened on Eugene’s sleeve in a deathly grip. “What you did and what I did is not the same.”

“Maybe it’s not. But Varian. Feeling the things you do when you’re hurt…doesn’t make you weak. And making mistakes that you regret-that have already been forgiven doesn’t…invalidate what you’re going through. Just as much as you being a criminal once doesn’t validate someone else hurting you when you needed help.”

“But it does.” Varian presses insistently, his once strident voice now a choked rasp. “It’s completely valid, because I deserve it. I deserved all of it. I’m-I’m so sorry.”

“Stop.” Eugene wants to sound assuring, patient-but he cannot help the small, skeptical edge to it. There is a heartless and unfeeling side of him that gazes into these tear-filled eyes and only remembers a disoriented rage that threatened him, threatened Rapunzel. These eyes…this once-Varian’s eyes- had harbored a cold and undeniable hatred, spasming through Eugene’s every pulse as the boy had cranked the gigantic automaton towards Rapunzel’s stationary form, ready to kill her. There had been an erratic and temperamental darkness that flashed in that burning glare, glistening with subtle yet unsettling sorrow behind a barred window as he was carted away with shackles. “You’ve apologized enough. You’ve done all you could.” Eugene’s grip in Varian’s hair loosens, and he gently turns his chin to meet those sorrowful, hurt eyes.

Swallowing back tears of shame himself,Eugene feels self-reproach well deep within his stomach. How dare he think those things of Varian, after he had suffered unjustly? How dare he of all people assume so much about a boy who had received so little, who had paid too much for trying to solve something that the king himself had tried to keep everyone from knowing?

“I’m sorry.” Varian repeats, and his voice is now fractured, weaning as though his throat has gone dry.

Eugene wants to tell him to stop again, because every word crushes a fragment of his doubt, chips away at what he knows to be true, what he knows has happened. Then Varian’s head is shifting, and his face sinks into his shoulder, figure still trembling with soft, forlorn sobs that begin to claw their way into Eugene’s chest, as though knocking on his heart to alert him of how wrong everything seems. When Varian’s frail, bony hand finds Eugene’s collar, the gravity of the situation finally settles into the man, and he clutches the boy tighter, as though they will both be pulled under if they let each other go. And strangely, Eugene can’t bring himself to further any affection, offer any consolation beyond the meager pats to his head and the constant rubbing on his arm.

The realisation borders on physical pain. Eugene cannot bring himself to whole-heartedly trust this boy, not yet, not after what has happened. But this time, the judgement is not up to him. This was about more than his distrust or Varian’s actions.

Then, Eugene is consumed by righteous anger, unadulterated rage that does not know where to spew. Someone had hurt this child when the king had promised he would help him. They had assumed Quirin for dead, and hurt his child. They had driven Varian to attempt suicide. They had awoken the demons that would plague the boy’s every glance at his own reflection, haunt every moment Varian would try to escape the dreadful clutches of the past, stumbling with the burdensome shackles on his feet. Eugene knew, because he had almost become this…once, in a life away from this, a world apart from this.

Now, he must help Varian. He _will_ help this-this lost, broken, sorry child. He will help the boy until he can be able to stand on his own, without driving the dagger of guilt into Eugene’s heart every time he looked up to him and saw a mere semblance of something he had once known.

Eugene must do it…for Varian, for the boy he could have been under different circumstances, for the boy he had admired for everything he would never be.

He must do it for Team Awesome.

Eugene must help Varian.

…

The weight of the what she is about to do is crushing as Rapunzel cautiously ventures into the planning room. “Dad?”

“Yes, dear?” Her father stands tall, though now his height seems less impressive and more oppressive. Nevertheless, his eyes sparkle with love, an unsuspecting tenderness that makes Rapunzel want to smile back, step back, reconsider her approach. No, she has to ask him. She must know.

Throat dry yet eyes moist, she asks. “Why didn’t you tell me about Varian’s suicide attempt?”

The man seems mildly startled, but the flash of concern growing behind his orbs speaks more to Rapunzel than what next leaves his mouth. “It wasn’t a suicide attempt, dear. The boy was just being careless and almost accidentally fell out.”

The lie stings more than she anticipated, stabbing into her harrowed heart and skewering into her dissipating resolve. The fact that her father still deems her unworthy of the truth-the very reality of her father lying to her without regret or restraint, all the while staring directly into her eyes, scissors into her whirring mind like an unnerving protrusion, fuel to the broiling dread in her gut.

“That’s not what Quirin said.”

The king bristles tensely, visibly, yet with a control that furrows his brow and deepens his frown to an allowed extent, as though he has practiced and perfected his reaction before resuming his calm demeanour. “Quirin has been overreacting after just getting his son back, Rapunzel. I’m sure you know what that’s like.” He tries to humor her, but it sinks heavily into her frantic mind like an arrant accusation and stings worse than the lie he had so readily spoken mere moments ago to her, with no caution or regard-as though he doesn’t expect her to prod further, ponder further.

The insulting nature of it overwhelms Rapunzel in the moment, and she almost bites back the broiling burst. “So you didn’t tell me because you thought I would overreact?”

“Because I knew you would get unnecessarily stressed.” Frederic replies matter-of-factly, and despite having lived with a narcissistic madwoman for the first 18 years of her life, Rapunzel is sure she has never heard something so insensitive and thoughtless.

“Unnecessary? Dad, I think my friend just trying to kill himself warrants some necessary attention!”

“It’s all under control, Rapunzel.” He snaps, and then slackens in shock. She does too, but for a different reason.

“Control?’” Rapunzel is demanding, defiant. It takes every ounce of her weaning patience to disallow the undermining dread from finding purchase in her words, swelling in her chest like a balloon. “What do you mean ‘under control?

“I meant Varian’s…situation is being dealt with. I promise.” Frederic corrects himself, but Rapunzel cannot miss the dubious pause between his words, the way they stumble and strain to seem viable, reasonable to her. These words…are twisted and tumultuous, _just for her_.

The last time she had heard those words, she had scoured the land only to find it ridden with ancient, unearthly magic that tore apart lands and lives. The last time her father had assured her that the situation was being handled, she had found Quirin’s paralyzed form, agonizingly encased in the looming, vibrant orange of an amber prison. Rapunzel had sworn she would find the answers, whatever it took. She had promised. Varian’s expecting, hopeful eyes stare back at her, blazing with amicable, sanguine fervor- needing to be assured, needing _answers_.

“It will be dealt with.” She whispers with finality.

Frederic jolts back. “What?”

“I will deal with it.” She raises her voice again, this time steady and ceaseless with conviction. “I want to know, Dad. I need to know who did this to him. Whoever it was probablywent against your orders, and since when are you so unseen on picking out unruly subjects?” It sounds like a mild taunt meant to weakly stoke a fire, not a rhetorical question that evokes the reasons she intends to seek.

“Since it doesn’t concern me.” Despite her disgust at this unsatisfactory answer, Rapunzel realizes with a twinge of pride that her father pauses and contemplates his speech now before answering her. It means that she must be getting somewhere. She has to be. “The boy served his punishment-time in prison, and I allowed you to officially pardon him. I don’t see what the issue is.”

Rapunzel is innumerably torn between crying out of shock and shouting out of fury. The flippant phrase is so audacious, so callous, so unlike everything she has come to associate with her father-the king-one of the most respectable people in her life. She wants to grab at his long, flowing cloaks like she had so many months ago, wanting to reach for a side that he kept hidden and unheard. Surely, this couldn’t be her father. Surely, this was a grudge, a rage, a timely phase, and when Dad-when the _king_ realized the gravity of his errors, he would pardon himself for acting so callous rather than caring, for

“The issue is that someone hurt him! Someone hurt Varian so, so _badly_ , Dad!”

“That someone could have been another prisoner, no doubt! It must happen down there all the time! For all we know, Varian himself could have provoked it, in his state! What do you want me to do? Search all of them? Add more punishment on top of the sentences they already have? Rapunzel, I can’t control what happens between prisoners. They’re unruly scoundrels who have no regard for the law-that’s why they’re down there. There is no order or fairness between two fugitives from the law. What happens down there is really none of our concern.”

Rapunzel raises her brow, the cold suspicion intermingled with the dread rising in her throat as she stands before the hazardous shards of her shattered optimism. She tries to quell the shock that is undoubtedly reaching into her eyes, gauging out the steady gaze that she has practiced and the ready pursuit of answers she has now embraced. “So a prisoner could have somehow acquired a full-lash whip…and beat Varian with it?” She steps forward, as though challenging him, and her heart leaps in its place, skipping beats as it pumps the courage rapidly through her veins, as though the rush will quickly die and she will quickly accept defeat if it falters even for a second. She must do it. She must pull this card. Her subjects need her to-Varian and Quirin need her to. “A prisoner could have starved him? A prisoner could have raped him? All while he was under _solitary confinement_?”

She successfully suppresses a dry, unbidden sob, pressing her lips into a thin line so that she does not waver. She _mustn’t_ waver. Not yet.

Frederic draws back, as though her words have struck him in the heart. “Where did you hear that?” When Rapunzel doesn’t answer, shocked at the insinuated admission and her own audacity, Frederic recovers and huffs in clear irritation. “Rapunzel, Varian was in solitary confinement for _four months_. He may have tried to clean up his mess-but he didn’t. He’s unstable, dangerous, irrational-this isn’t the first time he’s lied to you about anything before!”

“Like the way you’re lying to me, right now, Dad?”

“I’ve only done it to protect you! Who would you believe? Me, or that…” He spat. “Traitor?”

“Neither. I believe Quirin.” Rapunzel’s voice rings loud and clear. “I believe Quirin, because Varian didn’t tell me a word. I believe Quirin, because Varian was in bed, recovering from everything that’s happened. I believe Quirin, Dad, because he reminds me of you. You both love your children and would do anything to keep us safe. And if you’re claiming to do that now despite continuing to look down on that man and his son, you’re not being fair to me or yourself, either.” Her voice softens, quivers as though she’s picking out a thread that’s been sown into her heart, a belief she has to dismantle before her faith in her father collapses.

“I have no qualms about helping Quirin. I told him this myself. And if you have your doubts, you’re free to go and investigate for yourself!” Rapunzel deflates, partially in skepticism but also in relief. Surely, if her father was allowing her to look for answers herself, he couldn’t be lying to the extent she had originally suspected. Surely, if she did go and find anything, it would be evidence that her father had only neglected Varian…and not that he had actively allowed or enabled what had been done to him.

“But Rapunzel.” Frederic emphasizes her name in an almost infuriated hiss, and the untrusting, stern glare in his eyes sears into Rapunzel more painfully than any of his lies ever could. “When this little charade of his undoubtedly fails, I’ll have him sent off to the sanatorium.” Before Rapunzel can interject, Frederic raises his voice in finality, and it might as well have been the gavel in the stone. “It’s the only place where he can be helped. It’s the only place where you both can stay safe.”

With a curt nod, the king then leaves the princess bewildered and alone.

Rapunzel must find Quirin.

…

The weight of the damp, despondent atmosphere is crushing as Quirin marches purposefully down the spiral staircase to the dungeons, following the guard in front of him.

It is not a world so different from what Quirin knows it to be-but rather, what he has become accustomed to. Above these very hallways, he had once roamed the street with Alda and Varian, not quite oblivious yet secure in the knowledge that all that needs to be hidden is. There were subtle sorrows, deranged darknesses, concealed corruption that Quirin was sure his child did not need to and would not see. There were secrets that he did not need to care about. There was and always would be the sun, the cheery aura that stings to the nose like overtly sweet candy, the futile hope that burns away the creeping darkness that follows him at every corner, laying way for only his wife’s endearing smiles and the sheer awe in his child’s face as he eyed the sparkling candy tower at Monty’s Sweet Shop. Despair existed only in the cynical whispers of silly countryfolk who were never invited to gatherings and never visited by their grandchildren.

This is the whispers laid bare and unabashed.

Quirin bristles upon his first glimpse of Andrew. All of his senses overwhelm him with adrenaline. He can’t breathe. This-this was a lead, a clue. This was someone his son knew.

It was someone who had either helped or hurt his son.

They were eyes that had looked at Varian when he wasn’t there to protect him, for better or worse.

“Andrew?”

The man’s eyes sharply glisten in the dim light of the prison. His eyes reflect a sane perceptiveness, so unlike the maniacal grins he’s seen on the faces of most criminals in this floor. It glowers, looms unpredictably, almost as if it wishes to quash all that Quirin seeks, all that he must continue to look for.

Something about Andrew reminds Quirin of Hector. Perhaps it’s in the way his eyes droop with exhaustion yet stubbornly hold their fire, glaring defiantly through him as though challenging him. They are sharp and curved with instinct, ready to portray a thing they are not, gauge for every opportunity they can. And Quirin knows he must.

“You know my son?”

“Varian?” He knows. Andrew knows. The name slips out carefully, laced with surprise and… respect? There is a hesitance in the way he first jolts upright upon recognition, a flash of alarm and confusion in those dark eyes, before they turn away and he remembers the thing he has to be, the thing he is not. “Let me guess. You’re the esteemed _dad_.” The word is spat out with clear disdain, and Quirin’s heart wilts disconsolately at the possible notion that Varian had mentioned him to this man.

“Do you know if-“ He inhale shakily, licking his lips nervously. “Did you-?”

“No.” Andrew snaps defensively, disgust and realisation quickly poaching his face. “No, of course not.” The humane perceptiveness treads haphazardly, like a boy on a windowsill, ready to fall.

“How did you know what I was going to ask?”

“Because I saw it happen. All the time.” Andrew repeated, as though trying to rub salt in the wound. It sounds hoarse, desperate to be known, as though it must be heard. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? To find someone to pin the blame on? Assume that one of us-we, the filthy criminals touched your angel of a boy?” Andrew’s tone is aggravated and amplified with fury as he glares at Quirin, eyes aflame with accusation and annoyance.

“No, no, I didn’t-“ Quirin gently yet desperately tried to divert the conversation, calm the man, but it seemed he had been set off.

“It’s not like he willingly joined us, wanting to kick this cursed, incompetent kingdom in the-“

He yelped as a guard swung at him, the sound so jarring and sudden that it makes Quirin flinch in surprise.

It is a small blow, and Andrew glares back venomously at the guard who delivers it, but it makes Quirin jolt in shock nevertheless, instantly conflicted. His first (and only) instinct is to scold the guard - after all, Andrew had been talking to him, and he was rudely interrupted. Granted it wasn’t useful information…and Quirin would rather not have heard the end of that sentence. But did the guards really have to hurt the prisoners at their own whim, after they had already been sentenced to a place like this? What was the point, of monitoring their every conversation and punishing them outside of their sentences, when it would only carry more hatred to the name of the kingdom?

This new realisation-that the guards “kept watch” in more ways than one, that the prisoners were punished in more ways than one-unsettles Quirin’s mind more than he would like to admit. He imagines Varian in this cold, damp, unfair world-Varian, who is unable to stay silent when elated about a new discovery, when he knows something is wrong, when he needs help.

“Are they allowed to just hit you like that?” The question is meek, tentative.

Andrew looks at him as though astonished he would ask such a thing, before donning a heavier, more sincere sobriety that darkens in his irises, crawling over Quirin’s undoubtedly visible desperation for answers. Then his lips twist, but despite the crinkles in his pallid face and the slant of his mischievous eyes, Quirin cannot help but feel as though the smirk is unnatural, forced. Then there is deep and resentful pity in those eyes.

“Face it, old man. Your kid was a criminal. So he got treated like one.” Andrew’s voice gradually becomes leaden with sobriety, as though saddened by the heavy burden of a truth that is tremulous on his very words, an unfortunate darkness that looms threateningly over this aspect of their lives-an aspect, Quirin now realizes, that was once part of Varian’s life. “You’re not going to find what you’re looking for. Trust me. Just-just be grateful that he’s safe with you now. Just drop it-make him forget everything. He must.” At Quirin’s crestfallen yet skeptical countenance, Andrew quick adds. “Forget everything that’s happened. Tell him to act like it was a bad dream. Just don’t drag this out. Don’t make him relive it.”

“He won’t stop reliving it until I win for him him what he deserves.” Quirin simply replies, his tone steadfast with determination and long-practiced patience. “And he deserves justice."

He expects Andrew to howl in laughter, slap his knee, conjure up another insult, mock him even.

However, Andrew merely licks his lips, his intense stare never faltering.

“You said you saw it happen.” Quirin speaks, breathless voice robbed of all doubt and freshly refurbished with the sudden realisation. ‘What do you know?”

The deafening silence mocks him, flushing into his dwindling patience.

“Who did this to my boy?” Quirin tries again, hoping his voice does not falter or waver.

Nothing.

“Can you give me a name? A description? Some sort of account?”

Then, for a brief moment, his gaze lands on the guard in front of him. “Varian was in solitary confinement for 8 months. That’s all I can tell you.”

Quirin frowns, unsure of whether to correct or question him. “But the report said-“

“The kid was alone for 8 months, 2 weeks, 4 days, and 7 hours.” Andrew concludes icily. “Do you know how I know? Because when he came, he stood here for the remaining 3 months before we took over, _every single day_ , sobbing his little heart out to me about every single minute of hell he went through, and every single second he didn’t get to be with _you_.”

Quirin furrows his brow deeply, trying to process all of this. Andrew could be wrong-Varian could have gone hysterical. But what if the report was wrong? _Why_ would the report be wrong? Quirin searches for something else he wishes to know, the inexhaustible string of questions that weighed down his every thought like a burdensome chain that clinked in his mind whenever he tried to move-a constant reminder, a consistent pain, of what he had to do-what he must do for his son. Yet, feeling only more helpless than he did when he first arrived in the prison, Quirin sighs and merely stares back at Andrew, a strange warmth and sadness welling deep within his heart. “He misses you.”

Andrew seems taken aback, eyes softening as though riddled with nostalgia before donning a disbelieving, defensive shield of sarcasm. “Yeah, sure.” The laugh is wrung out, like a wet cloth on a winter morning, dry and cold in the flat air.

“He talks to you in his sleep.” Quirin continues, a fond and gentle warmth finding its way to his voice despite the damp and frigid draft of the dungeons. He does not know why. He is appalled by this man, this traitor. He feels no pity, no regard for someone who had, by all accounts, manipulated his son and conquered the kingdom for a short while. But for once, Quirin feels compelled to do what he does not have to-the gentle weight of another must drifting off into the unperturbed silence.

“He looked to you for comfort.” The soft weight of it is reposeful to his heart, and his voice reflects it, carries it like a wayward reminder more for himself than for the man slouched behind the bars.

“He was _upset_!” Andrew burst, practically throwing himself against the bars in a fit of impatience. “I didn’t comfort him. And he always blabbers in his sleep.”

Quirin supposes that is a good enough answer. It must be, coming from this criminal, at this hour, in this state. Andrew is not going to provide anything more than what he had offered, and Quirin knows his search is far from over. Still, he must confess - Hector made a much more comfortable psychopath to be around.

“I didn’t touch your boy, I swear.” Andrew’s voice is low with the heaviest sincerity, gravelly with hoarseness from disuse yet clear as the soft glints of light from the barred window. It reaches out cautiously, as though it needed to be heard-as though Andrew felt he must speak it aloud.

Awashed with a new wave of relief at the silent admission he did not know he had needed, Quirin nods in respect, wishing for it to convey in his greatest humility the utter gratitude Quirin suddenly feels for this…this deranged, self-absorbed, lowly criminal rotting away in the depths of his own failures. He had done for a short time what the greatest king and the boy’s closest family hadn’t been able to do for ages: he had been there for Varian.

However fake, however forced, his son had found comfort in this criminal-his son had been resourceful enough to make an ally, a standby. Useful answers or not, this man had helped Quirin more than the father would have liked to admit, and for that, Quirin was tremendously grateful.

“Except to hang him off the ship.”

Quirin whips around, stunned out of his wits. “You did _what_?”

“See you around, Varian’s dad!” Andrew whistles elatedly, as though retreating back into the slumbering beast, a bare reflection of what was known and true. It is as though he is trying too hard to show someone he is not, and Quirin is unsure if that is relatable or just irritable.

Quirin cannot help but wish he could grab the man and toss him inside and out for that cheeky little comment that had obviously been thrown in to rattle him on purpose…at least, that’s what he hoped it was. He would have to ask Varian about that later.

And yet, as the father begins to make his way out of the spiraling darkness, he cannot help but feel that with every strenuous step up the stairs, a new burden finds a perch on his shoulder, the knowledge that caresses and taints the back of his mind as the light of the castle hallway above the staircase finally comes into view.

He must keep searching for answers.

…

The weight of her indestructible hair practically crushes the thin tree branch, but Rapunzel cannot find it in herself to leave Varian alone. Right now, she and Varian are both dangling from her most favorite tree in the castle gardens in a make-shift hammock of her hair, immersed in their own worlds yet curled up next to each other as though the innate, unspoken closeness can be of any help.

It may be more helpful to her-she has just sent Quirin into the dungeons with a guard and a report filed under Varian’s name. Varian doesn’t know. Quirin had told her that Varian was not yet ready to tell them everything, but the man was more than eager when Rapunzel had offered him the chance to investigate himself. He had thanked her profusely and immediately rushed into his house, gathering a small satchel, an excited Ruddiger, and a very perplexed Varian into his small cart for the trip to the castle.

Rapunzel searches for the right thing to say. She has her pencil poised against the journal, but she knows she will not be able to draw anything. She has brought the journal because she doesn’t want Varian to feel pressured when he inevitably chooses to not converse and lapses into an awkward silence. She wants him to speak to her because he knows he can, not because he feels he has to.

Varian has done little to acknowledge her presence beyond silently resting his head against her shoulder. He has his eyes closed, but Rapunzel knows he is not asleep. She can feel it in his soft yet disconsolate breaths, the unpleasant thrumming in his heart that resonates to his back. She thinks of the way his skin contracts around his rib cage and how his clothes practically hang off of his bones, thinks of the lacerations that must be afflicting him terribly in this position.

“Do you want to switch places?” She asks tentatively. Varian wordlessly shakes his head, still not opening his eyes. The creases in his face run deep and wide, riddled with unspoken tension and stresses. The bags under his eyes cast large, purple shadows that seem to sink into the protruding cheekbones, and Rapunzel wonders with a crippling stab of guilt how many times Varian lay like this, eyes closed yet mind forever awake to the horrors that taunted him, tainted him, tore through his infrequent chances of slumber.

She might draw that.

The tip of the pencil barely grazes the fresh new page, and her hand stops short, stiffening as though she is unable to make the first stroke. The last time she had drawn Varian, it was when his eyes glistened with betrayal, dark and temperamental with a deranged, infuriated accusation… his face twisted into a mercurial, sour scowl she feared would always remain for her, because of her.

Rapunzel wants to erase the image from her head by conjuring a new one, here, because Varian has changed and she has changed and everything is so different now…everything should be better now.

But she can’t. She can’t bring herself to draw this new-Varian, because she doesn’t truly know how. She doesn’t know how to draw Varian, even as he remains immaculately still against her, patiently waiting for Quirin to return. And now, she can’t help but feel that nothing is better now. Nothing has truly changed since she had left...not really. She was still confused, and Varian was still hurting. When she had last seen Varian, his eyes downcast and face forlorn, tense with hatred and hunched over with the darkness that made both of them tremble, that shook both of their worlds in ways that they could never be put back together again.

Instead, Rapunzel invites the familiar darkness that tends to linger around Varian, ginger with her thoughts whenever she is near Varian. Perhaps it is because he reminds her of something too painful to be safely locked away, too real to be safely relived.

She wants to remember it. She wants to share it with him. She wants him to share it with her.

“You know, when I was back at the tower…” Rapunzel’s tone sounds strange even to herself- somber, gravely quiet. “There came a time when I-I often thought about what would happen if I fell off..”

Varian’s head snaps up to her, alarmed.

“It started off as a fear, at first.” Rapunzel keeps her gaze fixed on the blank page, the corner of her eye catching Varian shift and straighten with attentiveness. “I would stare out the window for a long time after Moth- _Gothel_ left. But…but then it became a real thought. I guess I realized no one would know if I died, given no one knew I existed. I didn’t think Gothel would have mourned me. Sometimes, for all of the sweet things she would say to me, her comfort-her being there-just felt empty…as though she couldn’t care less. But then I would think of times that made me happy. Times when I remembered how desperate she was to keep me form the world. I-I thought…well, she had to have done it because she loved me, right?” Rapunzel’s voice trembles, and she turns her head away, biting her lips as a new wave of tears blurs her vision, leaving the memory as clear and cold as ice, entrenched somewhere in her heart too deep to be hauled out and too profound to be ignored any longer.

“Those smiles-though fake or forced-were the only traces of love I’d ever known, for a time longer than I can remember. And when I did not do as she ordered, she would refuse to give even that. If she was upset, it must have been because of me. If she was mad, it must have been because I made her mad. I felt like a beggar, a servant in my own home…but I didn’t know that, so I wasn’t indignant.” Rapunzel continues, noting that Varian’s unfathomable gaze is intensely locked on her, as though he is latched onto her every word, like a child engrossed in a storybook.

“One day, Gothel got me some paints. It seemed the outside world was important to her-important enough for her to leave me every day. So I thought…I thought these paints were some kind of symbol. That she still thought of me. That she cared if I was happy.” Rapunzel chuckles to herself as she immerses into the nostalgic reminiscence-even if Gothel is swathed in her darkest fears and deepest resentments, she can not bring herself to let go of memories she had treasured for longer than she could remember. She cannot allow this part of her to dismiss what had been her world for the first 18 years of her life, for fear she would find no one left to blame but herself. “They were material, so I could hold onto them and the love with which she had gave them to me, even in the times she wouldn’t show me any love at all. That’s when I first started painting, because I could only think of good things when I did things that made me happy. And painting…painting made me so happy. Painting made me smile, and it was the only truth I would know for a long time.” A small smile, straining to remain on her lips and unable to reach her eyes. “I knew, from the moment I started, that no matter how many fake smiles I was met with, I must always stay true to my own. And to this day, even with Gothel gone and the canvas of the world at my fingertips…” Rapunzel inhales shakily. “Not a day goes by when I don’t remember her pinning this on me-telling me I deserved it. It took time for this pain to go away…it took time for me to realize that I deserved better, that I needed more than what I was given.”

A stunned silence ensues.

“But you didn’t deserve to hurt. You knew that.” Varian whispers, an eerie despondence weighing down onto his tremulous shred of hope as he makes to turn away from Rapunzel. “You and I are different, Princess. We hurt in different ways, and for different reasons. And you can’t…” He swallows thickly, the formality fading into his diminishing resolve. “You can’t possibly compare us. Except if you mean that I was as abominable as Gothel.”

The sound of the woman’s name from someone else’s tongue pierces Rapunzel to the extent that she flinches, and Varian’s eyes instantly well with tears. He attempts to distance them-and it is only then Rapunzel truly realizes that he’s trying to push Rapunzel away because he thinks she fears him…and not the other way around. For now, she’ll dismiss the sloppy comparison he has just attempted. For now, she’ll forgive him for this unneeded comment.

Rapunzel’s brows furrow as she turns her head in a solemn silence, eyes transfixed into the distance unseeingly. Then, her eyes glisten. Varian can assume they are shimmering with the rays of sunlight slithering in from the afternoon sun, but for an unbelievable moment, he almost thinks there are tears in her eyes-fears and hopes and consideration for him in those eyes.

Then, she speaks, her voice mellifluous and mellowed, pliant yet resilient. “You’re right. But Varian, everyone must move on. That doesn’t make what happened right. And…perhaps, even getting you justice won’t make things the same again. But…” She gently lifts his chin, and he is awe-struck with the soft, mesmerizing light that is her eyes, her face, her inordinately sublime presence. He is staring at the sun-a part of the sun, human and hurting enough to look at but strong enough to imbibe him in this brief, fleeting moment of hope, however false he feels it can be and however dark he knows it will get. “Always know that you deserve better, Varian. _You_ of all people must believe that you deserve better. Because if the whole world is against you, how will you ever get better?” The words are heavy with truth, laced and sown intricately with an earnest yet subtle sorrow that still pulses like the dull throb of a rotting wound somewhere, somehow, in a place she can’t discern. Nevertheless, it carries an aura of definitive, unspoken strength, as though it need not strain to don this cheery facade-this whimsical and impenetrable self that she has crafted so that she doesn’t hurt.

Varian wonders if he can ever have such strength. Rapunzel may have been weathered by this unfortunate reality, but he would have to be imbibed deliriously, nonsensically, with these thin hopes and thinner sentiments, that everything wasn’t a stark reminder of the darkness inside of him, the darkness that he is-the pains that he deserves for the ones he caused, the travesties he had to bear because it was never enough. It was never going to be enough.

“How-how can you say that?” He finally splutters, voice weak and thin. Rapunzel’s appealing countenance slowly fades, her brow settling in place and her eyes penetrating his every twitch of the face, every time he averts his gaze.

“How-I hurt you.” He swallows again. “I hurt you so much. I was…I was horrible. You of all people know I deserve to hurt the way I am. You of all people shouldn’t give a damn if I get better.” His voice wavers and cracks at the end, the words harder to form and mend, as though the smooth and steady path of his planned apology is shattering into discordant fragments that he must scramble to piece together. He must do this.

“I-I am _so sorry_ , Rapunzel.” Varian sobs. “Back in the prison, not…not a minute went by, every single day, when I didn’t think of you-when you promised that everything would be alright. I wanted to believe it so badly that-that it hurt so much when I realized it wouldn’t be alright, because of me.” Varian knew he was breaking off into a nonsensical ramble, fractured by his spluttering sobs and small whimpers. The mortification at what he is recounting twists into him like a scalding poker, and he feels her wince as his heart thrums uncomfortably against his protruding rib cage. “I-I never want to hurt again, but seeing the kind of person I was-the kind of person I am, I-I deserve to hurt. I’m sorry, Rapunzel. I’m sorry I made you hurt.”

The tormenting affliction of it all-all that he had done, all that had been done to him-finally overwhelms him, smothers his next breath as he gasps between his broken sobs. He had been responsible for inciting terror in those ever-gleaming eyes. He had been the cause of the sorrow and heartbreak and fury in that otherwise effervescent spirit. He had hurt this lovely person. He had corrupted their friendship, corroded their trust, destroyed all that could have been between them.

Rapunzel’s small hands are reaching for him, carefully clasping around his upper arms as though he is glass, and she will shatter him with her next move. Then he’s being encased in the embrace, surrounded by her lavender scent, her slender and nurturing arms, her soft yet indestructible hair. She doesn’t seem to be afraid, like she should be. But the pain doesn’t seem to diminish either, like it should have.

“I said I was sorry.” Varian whimpers. “Why does it still hurt?”

“It will hurt for a while.” She weaves a careful hand through his grimy hair, and he doesn’t even retain the decency to blush. Instead, he clutches her tighter, longer, farther into the future he cannot see.

“Why? Do you not forgive me?” He stares up at her desperately, eyes still sparkling with tears. If Rapunzel does not forgive him, then he has no reason to be here, greedily leeching off of her endless, undeserved kindnesses like the burden he is. If Rapunzel does not forgive him, he must respect her choice. He was the one who had caused her hurt, after all. He did not deserve to have a say in any of this.

If Rapunzel does not forgive him, there was no point in pretending like he deserved any of it at all.

Rapunzel smiles sadly, softly, as though it pains her to speak. “Of course I do, Varian. But you still haven’t forgiven yourself.”

Rather than quell the nauseating anxiety that cripples him, the words spill and sink deeply into his troubled mind, as though a pleasant song with an unheeded note, a steady rhythm with a jarring interruption in between. Varian allows the thought to cascade through his mind and grab the reigns of the insecurity dwelling within him, as though trying (in vain) to calm an untamed animal, an unfathomable beast.

Varian ponders this. The last time he had tried to misplace the blame, he had only ended up hurting everyone. The last time he had let himself go, tried to find other vehicles to harbor and direct his guilt…he had become a monster who needed to be hurt to stay tame. This…this abominable trepidation, the apprehension he feels when he goes a minute without anguish-keeps him tame. He has to keep the guilt forever attached to his heart like a leech, like shackles on the wrist, so that he doesn’t ever go too far again. So that he doesn’t ever hurt and deserve hurt again.

Here, under Rapunzel’s ever-forgiving embrace, Varian decides he won’t forgive himself. He will forever live with these hefty pains, with their hulking chains, if only so that he does not ever cause all that he already has.

He mustn’t forgive himself. What if the monster returns?

…

“You idiot!” Frederic hisses in malice at the bowed head of the guard. Ever since the Saporian takeover, during which the captain of the guard had left to search for Princess Rapunzel, a few guards had remained in the kingdom under lock and key until Frederic had regained his memories.

With no way to contact the captain or ascertain where he was, the king and his advisor, Nigel, had taken it upon themselves to sort the prisoner reports and guard duties from time to time. “Out of all of those prisoners, did you have to pick on that particular one?”

“But-but sir, you’ve allowed it for the others.” The guard stammers, eyes trained on the ground. The king hadn’t interjected with guards doing as they pleased to the prisoners before. His explicit orders had only been to ensure they were well fed, guarded, and serving their sentence.

“Yes, but you knew this was a special case!” Frederic growls through gritted teeth. “Now how am I supposed to answer to his father? To the people who have or will undoubtedly hear of this?”

“Just tell them it was another prisoner! Those freaks do this kind of stuff to each other all the time!” The guard insists

“And the whip marks?”

“We can tell them he was being resistant, petulant, uncooperative. It’s not as though no one thinks he deserved it. Besides, he was amongst the worst criminals. Things like these happen.” Nigel assists.

“Rapunzel says Quirin already had him examined!” The king demands with urgency. “How do we explain the story behind any other concerns that arise?”

“Your Majesty, please!” The advisor finally snaps. “The boy drugged the entire palace, stole a priceless magical artifact, effectively declared war, terrorized the citizens, kidnapped the queen, harmed the princess, and attempted regicide! Not to mention that he erased your memories and endangered all of Corona, multiple times! I think whatever happened down in that prison - _out of your own instructions and jurisdiction_ \- pales in comparison!”

King Frederic stares at him in surprise, and the advisor seems to have instantly regretted his outburst, fidgeting nervously with his clipboard as he averts his gaze. “Nothing is out of my jurisdiction, Nigel. I was informed on the… matter. And the punishment ordained by court was not as harsh as Rapunzel seems to think it is.” He frowns at the mention of his daughter.

“And you allowed it because you knew some discipline was in order, which the public should have no issues with. They already think the worst of the boy-how would anything you could have done possibly sway them in his favor?” Nigel insists.

“No, I simply did not think it had actually happened.” Frederic scoffs. “And punishments outside of the law…are allowed, in certain circumstances. As I said, Varian was a special case.” The malicious glint in Frederic’s eyes gives way for concern. “But if Quirin or Rapunzel sees that the punishment does not match the one I’ve signed in court, or find anything that resides outside the law, they will have something to hold me accountable for. Whether it be ordering Varian’s punishment, or simply allowing someone else to carry out his punishments incorrectly.”

Nigel sighs deeply in frustration. “You are the king. You _are_ the law. Your Majesty, with all due respect, we’ve gotten away with heftier punishments on lesser criminals, and no one so much as uttered a peep. Why should now be any different?”

“Because now, the people expect me to have changed. To have mended my ways and whatnot. Rapunzel’s…sentimentality has them thinking they can question me, defy me when they think there has been an injustice. Worse yet, it can inspire more criminals.” Frederic clarifies, now irritated. “We will just have to tell Quirin that things like this happen. Produce a new file under Varian’s name and adjust the details of the trial as you see fit. And send that watch guard to keep an eye on Rapunzel. Perhaps…perhaps I should inform Quirin myself.”

Nigel continues, voice lower and trembling with restraint. “Your Majesty, I respect your decisions greatly. But…but going to such lengths to justify what happened to that-that _menace_ , and to a vassal from a peasant village no less, is beneath you. If whatever you have done has been the right course of action, why don’t you simply ask Princess Rapunzel to stop the interrogations?”

“That will only rouse her suspicion, encourage her to delve further into matters she should not interfere with. She seems to have heard the account from Quirin himself.” The king frowns disconcertedly. Rapunzel was prying far too deeply into matters he had thought she would never even notice.

There is a pause as Frederic stares outside, clearly contemplating what had just been spoken. “This is not a matter of the right course of action, Nigel.” The king intones wearily, and suddenly, his brow becomes heavy with consternation. “I have no regret of how I handled the matter. But it is about people thinking their king has no control over his guard within his own palace walls. It is about people questioning my carelessness with respect to prisoner handling. It is about people accusing me when Varian inevitably returns to his dangerous and ungodly ways…when another storm hits, when Quirin is again away, when Rapunzel is too naive to know what is good for her.”

“Princess Rapunzel did manage to save the kingdom from the Saporians…” Nigel reluctantly concedes.

Frederic pauses to glare at him, ripe with condescension. “She has also let that criminal wander free and pardoned him on her own accord. Actions made by the de facto ruler in times like those can be later overruled by the absolute monarch if necessary.”

The threat wavers-it is thin and weary, emaciated of the conviction infuriating his earlier speech, as though it is becoming unsure of itself.

“But what do you suggest we do?”

The king does not turn to him, pausing again before answering. “We make it necessary.”

…

Varian has been in the palace courtyard for quite some time now, absent-mindedly staring into space and stroking Ruddiger’s fur. Rapunzel has long left, and his father had said he had important business to attend to. An old part of Varian had wanted to tag along, follow his father’s shadow wherever it went. Varian wanted nothing more than to bounce along with those long, purposeful strides, pretend like nothing has transpired, babble about a new invention as they scoured the familiar, winding path to the castle.

But he can’t. Deep down, clamoring within his heart and clinging to his skull, is the crippling, crushing knowledge that he cannot do all that he wants to, for the sake of returning things to as they once had been.

It is only partially because the paths are no longer familiar, and mostly because he can’t bring himself to walk alongside his father. He supposes it is the awful feebleness in his legs, and a more innate feebleness in himself. He can’t bring himself to speak with his father, for his throat clogs with horror as he feels those reverent, expecting eyes look to him for answers, for comforting knowledge of some sort. He can’t bring himself to fathom the utter shame and mortification he is bound to be overwhelmed by once his father learns the full extent of his experience-that’s why he has delayed it, delayed telling his father about who and what and where it all had happened. If he pretended like he didn’t remember…if he pretended like he could forget, he would be better off. They all would. They wouldn’t have to drag this out…they wouldn’t have to right a wrong that had never happened. What happened to him…hadn’t been wrong if he had deserved it, had it?

But now that Rapunzel was telling him he deserved better, now that Eugene was telling him he didn’t deserve to hurt… Perhaps they were right. Perhaps it wasn’t so easy for him to forget. Perhaps it wasn’t so easy for him to get better, become better, until this was resolved. If something like that turned his world upside down, contorting all that he knew to be true… If something like that made his father weep, made Rapunzel upset, made Eugene sentimental, then maybe it would be worth telling. Maybe it would be worth believing.

Would it be any easier? To live with the knowledge of what had happened, the knowledge that he could have gotten justice? The knowledge that he gave up seeking it before he had even tried, after all of the lengths his friends and family were willing to go for him? Must he seek justice-if not for himself, then for his father, who had toiled all this way solely for him?

Varian was still trying to figure out if there was any injustice to begin with, until suddenly, he felt an enormous figure tower over him intimidatingly, like an unyielding barricade- an unforgiving, omnipotent sun.

“You have quite some nerve, coming back here.”

Shock jolts through Varian so quickly that he can barely contain his startled gasp, Ruddiger jolting awake and chittering animatedly as he was promptly dropped. Varian trembles with trepidation, looking up with pleading eyes to find the King of Corona, towering over him like a wall about to crush him. He never thought he would have to see the king again…not after everything that had happened.

“You think you can defile my reputation, like you did your own.” The king’s voice is low, steady, like an arrow aimed to squarely hit him.

“I-I don’t understand-"

“What everyone has begun to assume isn’t exactly speaking for my competence as a king.”

Varian’s mind spins unpleasantly, dread coiling deep in his gut. “Assume? About what?”

“Whatever you’ve managed to convince Quirin and my daughter.” Frederic practically spits, a defensive, sharp edge taking over.

Varian’s jaw nearly drops. He hadn’t told his father that it was the guards who had abused him. Varian had pretended like he didn’t remember, like he hadn’t seen his abusers. He had lied in the vain hope that his father would finally see how hopeless it all was-how hopeless he was, and forget everything. He hadn’t wanted it to cling to Quirin’s mind like it had his own too often before, haunting his every opportunity of sleep and robbing every moment of peace. Was-was that why they were here? Was Dad’s important business…trying to figure out the secrets Varian himself was so desperate to keep? And Rapunzel had been involved, all along?

“Now, listen to me. I’m going to be a little more merciful this time, and give you a choice.” Frederic hisses in condescension.

Varian forces himself to meet the king’s eyes, though there is little that frightens him more than those stoic, emotionless orbs.

“You’re going to go to Quirin and Rapunzel, and you’re going to tell him it was nothing.”

The words are grave with demand and purpose, summoning a tidal wave of despair that crushes him in one swift sweep. Vision blurred and throat clogged, Varian croaks in a futile attempt at a plea of reason. “But-but they saw-“

“Tell them you provoked a fellow prisoner into a fight.”

“ _No_.” It comes out as a breathless plea rather than the defiant statement Varian intends it to be. He hopes the king does not see the way his sore legs tremble in place as they try to maintain his facade. Varian hopes the king instead sees the steep and rigid walls he’s constructed around himself- a warning, a reminder, a sign that he did not want to be this anymore-that he didn’t _want_ to deserve to be this anymore.

“Tell them it only happened once. A fling. Tell them you wanted it.”

A deafening pause ensues, only held by Varian’s stupefied silence. Then his face contorts into one of disgust and hatred, and for the first time since he was imprisoned, Varian hopes the king is afraid. He prefers to see the man afraid- to see the almighty king of Corona, who had once been glued to the dirty floor of his old lab, foolishly fumbling with demands and helplessly calling for his daughter- rightfully and respectfully afraid of him. It was a dark time in his life when he felt those dark things-a long time away from this life, it seems. But now that they are resurfacing, above the tide that threatens to submerge him entirely, Varian grabs them like a life raft. His words steel with a new purpose, pursue a new direction fueled by the sweltering broil that’s stabbing its way through his heart and tearing itself compulsively from his throat, and he now sees he can’t be this anymore. ***Prepare yourselves***

“ _Fuck you_.”

Unfortunately, it does not carry the intended effect. Rather than the familiar, calculating caution and accusatory anger Varian has become accustomed to seeing on the king’s face as he lay curled and bleeding into the wet floor-the restrained yet rampant fury with which the king had once towered over him, silently watching and heedlessly listening to his deafening screams of pain- King Frederic of Corona simply raises a brow, as though he had anticipated a better response and is thoroughly unimpressed.

Then his voice, low and controlled, unfractured and unfurled without the onerous weight of his grudges. “If you don’t tell Quirin this, I will tell everyone else. I’ll tell them you acted up, that you had conspired against us in prison. And once Rapunzel is convinced, the matter will end before it has begun. Eventually, everyone-including your poor old father-will be convinced that you are insane.”

The threat hangs heavily in the air, and sinks its claws deep into Varian, gnawing relentlessly at the walls, the comfort, the security system he had spent hours crafting. The fear of never being trusted again-the fear of being looked down upon with pity and disgust, being turned away as he grappled helplessly for some semblance of mercy…

“My-" Varian’s voice shakes, though his stare remains steady. He swallows away the sharp sting of anxiety that blossoms in his heart, the glare faltering as his breath hitches. “My dad won’t believe-"

“He wouldn’t? Like he didn’t believe my account of what you had done, dear boy?” King Frederic drawls in a sarcastic, almost mocking manner, brows raised and smirk poised. “Like he didn’t agree that sending you to an asylum would be the best option, before you pulled off that little stunt?”

Varian’s eyes begin to fill to the brim with tears of helplessness, and the despair welling in his heart hardens with the very real fear that plagues his every breath. No, that was stupid. That was a stupid plan. There’s no way Dad would send him away, no matter how adamant the people became. There was no way Rapunzel would simply believe her father after what she had been told. No, no, he has to set the walls up again, lest he be blown away in the turbulent turmoil that weighed down his every move like the chains he still wore over his heart. He must. He must brace himself against the raging torrents of everything that seeks to tear him down. He must find the ledge and hang on to it, however easy it is to slip. He must cling and claw and climb his way back, whatever it takes.

“F-Fine!” Varian finds it in him to yell. “Tell whoever you like! I don’t-” His breath catches, ready to spill out and be pumped back in quickly, like fuel to a fire. The idea of people-his fellow villagers-finding out about what had transpired elicits a cold, unwelcoming sting of dread to paralyze him. They had never liked him…but now, if they had reason to hate him further, Varian was not sure to what ends they would spare him or his father. He wishes to say he does not care…he shouldn’t, should he? Not unless he or his father were in any real danger… “I don’t care. I won’t lie to my father to cover up your mistakes!”

“Well, I won’t execute my best guards for a nuisance such as yourself!” The king spat.

The walls are restabilising and the winds are loosening, still strong yet now refreshing, as though he’s accepted the flow and known the course intimately, moved himself along with it so that he doesn’t have to be blown away. It’s as though a part of his old self is slowly opening the chest of treasures he had locked away long ago, deep within himself, without knowing. Emboldened, he reaches for an innate darkness, a dry sarcasm he doesn’t know he has still retained.

“Maybe that does speak volumes about your competence.” Varian mutters darkly.

The torrent is now tussling his hair rather than trying to tear him apart. This ability-this small yet significant victory, emboldens Varian, somehow makes him feel more powerful than any memory of his mother, any embrace from his father or Rapunzel - right here, unable to walk, being towered over and threatened by the most fearsome man in the world. It’s a semblance of knowledge that clings to Varian’s diminishing despair like a lichen, glues his last insecurities together, fills the previously endless abyss he always feared falling into.

It is as though Varian has been hanging over an abyss, only to realize by an echo that it was not as deep as he thought. Because for the first time, Varian feels indignity. For the first time, Varian knows he deserves better. He must have deserved better.

“You’re foolish enough to not care about yourself, I see. But what about your dearest father?” Entrapped with horror, Varian’s eyes immediately flicker to Frederic, and heavy dread broiling in his gut. “It would be a real shame if Quirin were to just…mysteriously disappear during his morning duties, would it not?”

“Rapunzel won’t let you.” Varian automatically replies. The king must be bluffing. He wouldn’t hurt his father. He can’t. The king admired Quirin…he had called him an old friend. Then again, the king had actively sent guards to prevent Rapunzel, his own daughter, from finding answers before…

“Rapunzel won’t _know_.” Frederic spits back almost petulantly, as thought this were childish banter.

“I’ll tell her.” Varian does not care if he sounds unconvincing. He will. He would do it. He would. He must.

“You won’t. You can’t. Don’t you see, you foolish child? You’re not going to be able to say anything that I don’t want you to, and if you do speak, it will be everything I need you to. I’m going to be watching you and your precious father, very closely.” He gestures to a figure that has been hidden until now-a guard. The man marches up to him dutifully, turning to Varian. Frederic treads with caution. “Do you remember him, Varian?”

Varian does not only remember the guard. He knows him. He knows the cruel glare as he once lay pinned against the cold dungeon floor. He knows the malicious smirk as he cowers and cries and crawls to get away, helpless and hurting in a pool of timeless pain. He knows his maniacal eyes as they burn into him mercilessly, the only semblance of a glint in the world of dark shadows, tremulous under the weight of frigid, blood-soaked rags clinging to his skin and long, aching nights in wait of the sun.

The abyss may not be as deep as he thinks, but the wind has returned, howling against him and ringing in his ears.

“Then I assume you must also remember that he is quick on his feet and true to my word. He will accompany you and your father back home, look after you both. And if you so much as utter another _word_ on this matter, he will take _care_ of you both. Have I made myself clear?” Frederic glowers down at him, encouraged by his stunned silence.

Varian almost chokes on his next breath as his distraught mind scrambles desperately for a way out, a loophole in this no doubt faulty plan. “W-well, what if people connect the dots? Won’t people assume you’ve silenced us on purpose? Won’t that make people angry, knowing their king threatened one of his subjects to hide his own mistakes?”

Frederic raises an eyebrow uncaringly. “You speak as if you don’t know how often I’ve done this before.” He pauses at Varian’s startled expression, then continues. “I’ve managed to unearth and dismantle a drop of heaven to save my wife. I have silenced people about the unleashed darkness within. You, boy, are not the end of my reign, nor even a substantial threat to it. Why, I can even go talk to Quirin right now…”

The guard smirks.

Varian’s heart thunders in his chest as he feels those eyes crawl over him, imagining their indefatigable, penetrating weight burning into him as he cried himself to sleep in his father’s arms, as he watched his father harvest pumpkins, as his father leaned over to kiss his brow and promise him everything would be alright. Eyes scrutinizing and scouring for any moment that he was alone, a second to hurt him. Eyes ready to dig the blade into his father’s back every time Varian opened his mouth to tell the truth he so desperately sought…

“Wait!” The tide shifts its course, fills and congests him as he tries to gasp for air and remain afloat above the torrent that wants to yank him into the depths forever. And so he must cling to it. He cannot let go, not yet. He cannot climb up either-not yet. He must learn to know how to hang like this for longer than his arms ache and his legs go numb. He must know how to make a compromise. He must know where to draw the line. “You-you don’t have to send him. I’ll talk to my dad.”

“Oh?” The king sounds innocently surprised, dare he say even humbled, but the silent mockery of it still stings Varian, as though he’s been slapped so hard he’s sprawled across the earth and cannot get back up, not without help.

“Yes! Yes, I’ll-“ Varian swallows away the bile that abruptly rises in his throat. “I’ll tell him anything you want. I promise. Just don’t hurt my dad-God, _please_ don’t hurt him.”

The king stares back at him, eyes sharpened with an urgent steadiness, as though he is attempting to ascertain whether Varian understands the gravity of what he is committing to.

Then he nods slowly, satisfied. “As long as you keep that promise, no one will.”

As the king treads away and Varian is engulfed by another reeling bout of self-reproach, he grapples with the newfound despair of what he had just done. But he had to do it… no, he _has_ to do it. He must.

Too involved in his own worries, Varian misses the conspiratorial glance that King Frederic briefly shares with the guard when he turns his back to him. Quirin is loading their cart in the distance. Then his father bows to the king, and Varian’s heart stutters in place as he searches for a sign of deception, a hint of mistrust or reluctance in his father’s otherwise unfathomable expression. His father still reveres the king…which means he doesn’t know. There is still time.

_It will be better if they dropped it, anyway_ , Varian tries to convince himself in vain as he feels another onslaught of tears threaten to spill down his cheeks. He deserved it. He knows he did.

Father and son begin to make their way home, oblivious to how Frederic stares after their retreating figures for a while, then slumps his shoulders and sighs almost mournfully, as though heavy with regret.

“Sir? Why did you just…trust him?” The guard asks, perplexed.

The king begins to make his way back into the palace, and the sun burns high in the sky, an orb of immeasurable light, drenching the darkness that seems to surround him as he speaks his next words, thick and dripping with conviction. “I don’t. The messenger has already been sent.” He turns to him slowly, eyes steeled and sharp.

“Take two other men with you. And dispose of the uniform before you go.”


	2. Unfaltering: So I Can Tell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Featuring: GRAIN, apples, angst, PTSD, panic attacks, pumpkins, self-hate, mood swings, emotional turmoil, slander, foul language, dumb teens, dumber adults, flying hands (you'll see why), historically inaccurate manipulation of the feudal system (just because), historically inaccurate words/things in general, backwards mentalities, LIES, angry mobs, more grain, overprotective papa Quirin, sinister schemes and one depressed bean. You have been warned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for your support. I am SO sorry for the long wait. Things have been pretty difficult lately.  
> Heads up: my bad writing has elicited my friend to scream “QUIRIN” about 21 times throughout the entirety of this trash. And “VARIAN” about 12.
> 
> Brace yourselves.

Varian does not speak as his feet find the familiar floor. He does not see anything except the familiar door of his familiar room, and he suddenly finds himself sprawled over his bed, scrambling for a pillow as the first sobs begin to sneak their way out. His cries are wordless and his tears are silent, as he has learned there was nothing good that came out of screaming. His screams were for deaf ears and empty halls, for the very real rage that bubbled in his heart despite the very distant haze of clouded frustrations that pumped his blood. This situation had escalated to unmanageable heights. He had not asked for Rapunzel and his dad to blow this out of proportion. Dad had violated his trust. Dad had told, and now more people were going to find out. The king was going to kill both of them if anyone found out.

_Stupid, stupid, stupid._ He should have locked his door. He should have drank a mixture. He should have cut himself, goddammit! What had possessed his mind to jump out of the goddamn window?What was he to do?

_Think, Varian, think._ Varian closes his eyes and digs his fingers into his temple, uncaring of the light sting on the skin or the grimy bang of hair. How could he convince Dad that he did not want a trial? How could he convince the man who hung on his every word and saw to his every need…that he was everything they had believed him to be?

He needs escape. He needs release. He needs a distraction. Only then would he be able to think clearly. Only then would the tempestuous vortex of emotion that blurred his thoughts for every hope and battered his chest for every breath cease. Only then would he be able to formulate a proper plan of action.

Varian bites his lip, checking to make sure Quirin is still outside tending to his matters before scrambling to open every cupboard and curtain. His knife…his knife…where was his knife? If there was one thing that could distract him from this pain, it was his knife. If there was one thing that could make him feel powerful, weightless enough in this chasm of burdensome truths and unfiltered horrors, it was his knife. It had helped him before. It had numbed his pains, wiped away his tears, lulled him to sleep before.

His frustration at the distanced notion of the smooth, cool blade against his flesh only peaks. How was it he couldn’t find any sharp objects? Since when did they have absolutely no sharp objects of any kind? He could have sworn they had a plentiful assortment of shears, scissors, splitting mauls… His father owned a chopping axe, for God’s sake!

His panic increases ten times fold when he hears footsteps in the doorway. No, he couldn’t talk to Dad like this, not yet. He needs to cut first-he needs to bite himself first, before he compulsively projects a stream of venom meant to severe their relationship and tear apart the little affection his father had somehow managed to salvage for him.

Much to his luck, he stumbles face-first into his father, who had just been making his way to the kitchen. “Hey now.” Quirin exclaims, not unkindly as he quickly grabs his arms to steady him from tripping over his own feet. “What’s the rush?”

“Where is my knife?” The question leaves his mouth without a second thought.

No sooner has the word oozed from his tongue does a shadow quickly cast over Quirin’s face, which falls and pales in shock. “Why?” He broaches carefully, eyes intently searching his own.

“I want to cut apples.” Varian lies easily.

Quirin’s eyes pierce into him with a startling, apprehensive dread before he blinks a few times, inhaling shakily as he feigns a smile. “I can do that for you.” They walk into the kitchen, Quirin proudly setting down a large pumpkin and scattering dirt over the table.

“No, _I_ want to cut my own apples.” Varian insists, knowing he sounds ridiculously petulant. He observes with guilty astonishment as Quirin’s gentle smile begins to waver, and for the moment, Varian is hopeful that he will sigh deeply and turn his back to him, rightfully realize that the cause is useless and give in to his annoying, ungrateful son. It cannot possibly take this long for his father to snap, which is why Quirin’s next reaction jars him incredibly.

“But why?” His patient voice heavies with an almost imperceptible yet ostensibly irrefutable despondency, something that treads lightly around the border of disappointment. It sounds defeated though it fully intends to remain strong, and this irks Varian to no end.

“Because!” Varian’s voice escalates. Since when did Dad question him on anything if it meant he didn’t have to do it himself? Since when did his father willingly involve in proper conversations with him, without any sign of stress or impatience? “Why not?”

“Son, I just…I don’t think you should be handling dangerous objects.” Quirin silently admits, eyes averting as he pinches his lips tightly together, as always-sealing away the many more words he has to say and sentiments he refuses to relay.

“I’m not five, Dad.” Varian’s voice quivers despite how he wishes it steels with rage. “I can hold a knife without hurting myself.”

Quirin turns to him, the creases of tension on his face deepening into a sorrowful frown. “No, Varian, I don’t think you can.”

The admission sinks its claws deep into Varian, igniting an unwanted rage. There it is again. Quirin thinking he knows best, and instead unintentionally wounding Varian far more than the dangers he thinks he is protecting him from. Quirin doubting his readiness, his skill, his maturity.

Dad doubting _him_.

“Like what you think has ever helped.” It is accidental, unintended, yet the effect is instantaneous. Immediately, his father’s careful hand stops short of where it was about to grab another piece. A thick sheen of moisture glosses over his eyes, a faint pink speckles his nose and cheeks, and his lips twist violently, as though struggling too fast to contain something too powerful.

For a moment, Varian nearly gives up right there, though the unfamiliar anger remains, lingering and frolicking in the depths of his insecurities, caressing the frustrations he has bottled and bolted shut. It should be easy to do it-it should be easy to feel sympathy for his father on the grounds that he believes he is doing all he can. It is the same sympathy that quashed Varian’s frustrations like a flood to fire when he had watched his father’s back retreat into the ginormous corridors of the castle after lying to the king. It is the same sympathy that held back Varian’s tears as he recalled his father’s infuriated glare, staring down at him, challenging him to speak. It is the sympathy that morphed into a symphony of endless darkness and denial-long, sleepless nights in front of the looming, bright amber, trying to believe that somehow, even after being trapped in that suffocating prison of his own making, his father would come out with an open breath and mind. “Please give me my knife, Dad.” Varian pleads softly. He could deal with this later. Varian would apologize and cry into his father’s shoulder later, after he ran the cool blade against his feverish skin. He would truthfully answer to everything his father asked, _later_. Right now, only he knows what he needs, and he will be damned if his father dares to convince him otherwise. “I _need_ my knife.”

But then his father shakes his head, pursing his lips in that awful way as those awful tears continue to glisten in his eyes. He turns away, and Varian snaps. Dad is turning away from him, from what he has to say, from what he feels is right. Dad does not care about what he _needs_. Dad is bowing his head, turning away forever. Suddenly, Varian feels more hopeless than when he first arrived back home after his father was freed. Suddenly, Varian feels more bold than he has ever imagined himself to be, with words that can maim and maul the very hope that convinces his father that keeping him trapped within the walls of his own trauma-smothered by his own screams of pain-would help him get better. Suddenly, Varian does not want to get better.

“If you don’t give me it, I’ll find it myself.” He allows the threat to hover in the tense silence that follows, uncaring that his father bristles in alarm. What’s the point of lying to him, anyway? What was the point of even attempting to avoid suspicion? _Let Dad believe nothing has changed. Let Dad believe that I would ever let him decide what I need to have or know, ever again._

For an opportune moment, Varian notices Quirin’s eyes flit to a cabinet in the far corner of their kitchen. His feet take off before he can properly process why, but Quirin quickly jumps forward, tackling him. They hit the ground hard, and Varian still makes to get up, struggling to ignore how the dull ache in his ribs worsens or how his already feeble legs cramp terribly. It does not help that he has about 200 pounds of frantic father weighing him down, curling around and clutching him in a crushing grip.

“Varian-”

“Let go!” Varian screams, writhing and flailing in his grasp. His father shakes his head and only tightens his hold, but Varian can feel the way his father’s breaths tremble with his every jab to the chest and every scratch to the skin.

“ _Son,_ please-”

“I need my knife!” He repeats it again, the attempt becoming too futile, the anger and resentment and frustration and confusion returning tenfold. “It hurts too much without my knife!”

Instead of the admonishment he should have yelled, Quirin only speaks softly, as though trying to hush him after another nightmare: “I love you.”

Infuriated, Varian writhes more, wordlessly screaming in vexation as he pounds his small fists at any part of his father he can reach.

Quirin’s irresponsiveness to everything he says-his insistence to say the same lie, over and over- is demeaning and increasingly excruciating with every passing second, though every sob that intersperses with his father’s weakening voice drills a deeper indent in Varian’s heart, pulsating angrily in tandem to the rivulets of ignited vexation gushing powerfully through his veins. Rather than the caress it should be, the words are only a slap to the face, a brutal and inflexible reminder of how the very words he had always yearned to hear are only being said out of a sick, twisted sense of pity. Dad does not truly love him. He pities him. _He think I’m sick. He think I’m broken._

“I love you.” Quirin repeats softly, as still and steady as a boulder in raging river as Varian’s nails drill deep into the calloused flesh of his arm, bony fingers trying to pry himself from the grip. The words set him alight again. His father hadn’t listened to him all this time, disregarding and demeaning him-it took Varian nearly killing himself to make him truly notice him. And even then, he didn’t truly understand him. Dad had been prepared to send him away. Varian realizes. _Dad had wanted me gone._

“I love you.” The voice trembles under the weight of emotion, fractured by a pained grunt as Varian’s elbow rams into his gut, though the hold does not loosen in the slightest. Despite how much Varian wants to latch onto these words, the want for his father to experience for a moment how he has felt for the past year-forever trying reign his sanity and self in by the horns, forever suspended in a painfully endless abyss with nothing to clutch but feeble hopes and futile promises-dominates him like a euphoric charisma.

Varian panics when he feels his father’s weight shift, the strong hand wrapping around and clutching his right arm to pin it against the floor. “Let _go_ of me-e!”

“ _Stop_.”Quirin’s word is stern despite how it is clearly intertwined with tears. “I love you so much, but you need to stop.”

“No-o.” Varian weakly musters, muscles still twitching and stomach still lurching from the feverish spasm of energy despite how his figure nearly stills instantly under his father’s weight. Once again, his greatest efforts do not matter in the slightest. Once again, he must remain trapped under the sheer weight of forces and fables and falsehoods until someone else deems him worthy to be allowed back up. Once again, he is _losing_.

Without warning, Varian’s spare hand lashes out by accident, and a distinct thump sounds when his curled fingers meet a bony cheek, followed by a soft, startled gasp. The next thing he knows, Varian finds both of his arms pinned firmly against the ground. “That is _enough_ , Varian.”

Breathing heavily, sweat dripping from his temple and clinging to his disheveled hair, everything in Varian’s world stops all at once. He finds himself gasping for breath, his eyes closing to find peace in the darkness and the roar in his ears quieting to find focus in the disconsolate thrumming of the powerful heart behind his own, his father’s hoarse sobs now finally leaking into his heart and flooding his mind with horrific, spastic, complete guilt. Several moments pass before the many unfamiliar sobs cease into a single, familiar voice.

“Varian? Can I let you go now?” His father’s gentle voice, so used to being patient and steady, now fractured, _corrupted_ with inexhaustible tears. It sounds like a desperate plea-as though despite Varian being the one pinned to the floor by sheer force, Quirin is the one who is in pain. “I want to properly hold you. Please?”

Feeling tears of frustration burn against his closed eyelids, Varian shakes his head stubbornly, allowing the obstinate resentment and bitterness to overwhelm his senses once more. His father does not know what being hurt like this felt like. His father cannot possibly feel any pain now, with all the pain he insists upon _letting_ him drown in. _This is for your own good, Dad. Now you know what it’s like to be hurt because someone else believes they know what’s best for you._

“How about a deal? If you talk to me about what’s bothering you so, I can let you go.” Quirin proposes lightly, cautiously, as if the slightest misstep will harm him irreversibly.

Varian vigorously shakes his head again. That would defeat the whole purpose! Did Dad understand _nothing_ about how he managed his pain? Had Dad been the one who had gone through all of these…these excruciating atrocities? Who was Dad to force him to talk? Who was Dad to choose how he coped with his suffering?

“I don’t want your _stupid_ deal. I want a proper choice.” Varian weeps begrudgingly, exhaustedly, secretly relishing in how his father’s thumbs rub consolingly into the marred skin of his wrist, over the jagged and unclean scars that he knows will never truly disappear. “You don’t think I deserve that? After a whole life of never being listened to… after a whole year without _you_ , Dad! Can’t I be able to make _one_ choice for myself without having to give up something in return?”

“The choice to what? Kill yourself?” Quirin asks almost snappishly despite the thick tears in his throat that cleave and rupture his sentences. “Why is that better than, say, a choice to live?”

“I wasn’t going to kill myself, I swear!” Varian insists keenly. He is not going to debate this on the floor like this - on his side with his back pressed up against his father’s heaving chest, his wrists out in front of him and held down by the sheer force of his father’s hands, the strong arms locked securely around his shoulders and disallowing any room for movement. He is not uncomfortable-in fact, he would remain silent and still in this embrace for as long as his father wishes, allowing every stress and strife from the day to slip from his mind like smoke from a dying flame as he falls asleep. But Varian knows as well as his father that he will dart for the knife the instant he is let go.

“I just…I just want for it to stop.” He admits faintly, listening attentively for the predictable hitch of anticipation in his father’s breath, the loosening grip and the craning neck.

“Want for what to stop? What’s hurting you, son? What’s making you think this way?” Quirin appeals to him urgently, as though he does expect him to talk. At Varian’s silence, however, Quirin heaves a small sigh, and Varian can hear the gears turning in his father’s head. “Ok. Alright. You said you wanted a choice, right?” Varian nods frantically, sniffling. “How about this? Tell me about how you’re feeling, and if I can’t help you feel better, I’ll let you have the knife. But I’ll have to stay and watch what you do with it.”

Varian frowns, having chosen to reject it the second his father mentioned that he would have to talk about how he feels. “And if you can?” He inquires, purely out of curiosity. He wants to see the limits he can push - he wants to discover and test the boundaries he knows he can never consider crossing.

“Then-” Quirin pauses, clearly considering it for the moment. “Then you have to throw it away.”

“No!” Varian immediately protests.

“Varian, why do you even need it when you can talk to me now?” Quirin asks, sounding utterly depleted as he tries to crane his neck to observe his son’s face.

Varian huffs, grumbling under his breath as his face forcibly scrunches into a bitter scowl of acrid disdain. “Who says I can’t do both?”

A deep, slow exhale through the nose, and then: “If you talk to me, tell me whatever you like about what made you act like this, I’ll let you have the knife. Either way.”

Varian’s breath hitches in sudden anticipation, compressing the irate turmoil of his thoughts in an instant. “You will?”

“Y-yes.” Quirin’s voice wavers at Varian’s prompt willingness. “But only if you talk to me first. Then-then I’ll hand you the knife myself. I’ll leave the room, and you can do anything you want with it. I won’t interfere or try to stop you. _Please,_ son.”

Struck with a simultaneous mixture of refurbished bafflement and anxious anticipation, Varian contemplates the offer. This is a ripe opportunity; if it persists like he thinks it will, he will be able to make both ends meet. He could tell the Dad what the king told him to, and once his hopeful expression crumbled, Varian would doubtlessly receive the knife, like a long-awaited prize, without so much as a second thought or a moment of hesitance. Hell, if he felt like it, he could even try to kill himself again. It is not as though his father will want to stop him again. That is, if both of them kept their word. “Do you promise?” He asks carefully.

Quirin ducks his head against the back of Varian’s shoulder, and Varian can feel every minuscule twitch of the eyelids, every tremble of the lips. A morose, deflated breath escapes the man, weary and wavering. “ _I promise_.”

Varian nods, but Quirin does not lift his head nor sense movement, clutching his son with all of his might as though he fears the very prospect of letting him go. Varian’s wrists strain in his grasp.

With difficulty, Varian cranes his head so that he can barely see the top of his father’s. “I’ll do it.”

“Really?” The incredulous query is void of relief, riddled with disbelief.

“As long as you let me do whatever I want with it.” Varian reminds him, feeling unprecedented guilt shatter his glass-like resolve and bury its shards into his chest at the sight of his father’s tearstained cheeks and the purple mark pulsating angrily against the pale jaw.Quirin does not answer, but Varian does not have time to ponder it. He releases his wrists, still hovering above him on his knees as Varian turns over. He holds his arms out. “Can you hold me first, please?”

Some semblance of reason returns to Quirin’s glazed eyes as he hastens to lean forward and lift him into his arms and off the floor. The awful feebleness in Varian’s feet returns, but Varian thinks nothing of it. The embrace is too constricting, too painful in its reminder. Quirin holds him as though it is the last embrace they will ever share.

Then, the absolute fear returns, binding to his speech sporadically. Once these words reached his father’s ears, everyone would forget, and his life would resume normally as though nothing had happened. Varian feels empty as his heart sinks deep into his gut, overwhelmed by the realisation.

Dad’s now frequent, warm embraces would have never happened.

Eugene’s trusting, sincere assurances would have never happened.

Rapunzel’s sweet smiles, sweet glances, sweet words-would never have occurred.

Everything would go back to the way it had been…He could become Varian the screwup, the outcast, the disappointing son again, instead of whatever he had become now-whatever stared back at him blankly with dark, glazed eyes and tainted skin and haunting dreams whenever he tried to search for his reflection in the mirror, in his father’s ever-gleaming eyes, in his own self.

Whatever had made his father weep long, empty nights and search dark, empty hallways for him.

But then, a part of Varian does not want to do it. An old, disgusting part of him that he absolutely detests-the same one that hesitated before leaping to his death-wants to cling to this ephemeral reality, this thing that he does not deserve, because it is less painful and less partial to the torrent that seeks to sweep him back into a nauseating whirlwind of past memories, horrors that make him shrink in shame and sink in self-reproach.

He does not want for Quirin’s eyes to turn away. He does not want for Rapunzel’s pencil and Eugene’s hand to stray. He wants to cling onto these small blessings, these undeserved kindnesses, until all crumbles on its own, as everything tends to whenever he’s involved. They have not lasted long enough-he has not savored them enough.

“Varian?” His father’s eyes burn into him, alight with concern and apprehension. They are in his room now, standing near his bed, which is still strewn with unmade sheets and used tissues. The dying light of the sun shimmers from the closed window.

“I-um…” Varian inhales shakily though he wishes for nothing more than to crumble. His voice weighs heavily down into his heart, stuttering with every breath. Once these words leave his mouth, he would have properly killed himself, effectively and immediately.

How long could he feed the hope that his luck would continue forever-that Rapunzel’s serenely warm smiles and kind endearments, Eugene’s playful banter, his own father’s gentle gaze, ablaze with patience and adoration-would last for eternity?How long would it take for him to realize that the lights he gravitated to in the darkest of nights could vanish from sight? The small goodness that was this undoubtedly brief and inauspicious dimension of time he had stumbled into did not belong to him-it was a silent lake from under which the more gruesome, ugly reality would undoubtedly resurface, plunge him back into the frigid grips of the forgiveness he could never hold and the endearments he should never hear.

_Just say it. Say it so that everyone can stop all this trouble. Say it before someone pays the price for your insolence. Everything will be better this way…Dad would want it this way._

At that, Varian abruptly sucks in a deep breath he hadn’t known he was scrambling to grasp, and something in his chest constricts. He watches his father lean back against the closed windowsill. For an uncomprehending moment, Varian thinks his dad will finally do the right thing and throw him out himself. It is what he should have done, instead of foolishly grabbing Varian back into the world, back into this jarring and frenzied reality where he must disorientedly clamber for fleeting moments of peace through the pain and hope through the horror.

But he doesn’t. As usual, Quirin chooses to wait. And it finally coaxes Varian’s fears to the fore.

_Start with the truth_. _It’s what he deserves, after all_. “You-you should have let me die!” Varian beings to cry, startling the living daylights out of his father. “I wanted to leave this world. I wanted to leave you.”

Quirin gasps and frantically shakes his head in horror, already reaching out to hold him. Varian pulls away, turning to bury his face in his hands. “No, no, don’t you ever say that, son…What’s wrong? Why are you talking like this?” Varian does not look up, savoring the feeling of his palms pressed firmly against his eyelids. “Whatever this is, we can work through it together. I promise. Just please-please don’t say these awful things.” Quirin pleads. “I love you so much.”

“No, you don’t.” Varian rasps tearfully, trying to blink away the tears enough to stare back. “You don’t, but it’s easier to say now because I tried to kill myself.”

“Varian.” Quirin whispers in admonishment, but it sounds more dejected and disheartened than disappointed. _Stop, stop_ , _stop,_ old-Varian pleads in the back of his mind, throwing himself at the unbending barrier new-Varian’s pitiless tirade forms between his father and himself, observing the man’s face contort into a rare glimpse of anguish.

“You may act like you care now, but I know once I get better you’ll stop-you’ll stop and I’ll be all alone again-you’re going to leave me alone again!” _That’s a good start._ They had all left him, and were only with him now so that they could leave him again. Driven by some twisted sense of pity and self-righteousness, they must have realized that if he was broken, he would never dare those treasonous blights against them again, and if he grew stronger, they could easily leave him on his own again, to fend for himself as the world churned his life inside out. The very tangible possibility parches his throat, leaving the awful lump to grow.

Quirin silently listens the fragmented thoughts tear their way out of his son’s heart, the heart-wrenching sobs as he descends into a fit, trapped in the pain of his own psyche.“Oh Varian,” he murmurs, reaching forward to clutch his arms as he so often does before a much-sought-after embrace, as though silently asking permission to even touch him. “What makes you think I will ever leave you alone?”

It is another vile question with an answer Varian sheerly detests, so he flinches away from the well-meaning touch and the well-meaning love, as though it singes him to the bone. His mind whirs with the cacophony of his turbulent thoughts, ablaze with fervor and endless worry. Then, it takes an abrupt, nauseating jolt that jars him haphazardly back into reality. _Look for something to remind him. He needs to be reminded of just how hopeless his son is._

“Why won’t you just give _up_?” Varian squeaks, feeling treacherous guilt at how the light in his father’s eyes falters, flutters under the weight of the heavily somber atmosphere. “Why aren’t you mad?”

“Why would I be mad?” His father asks with an irksome level of forbearance. _Throw something at him. Throw him off balance._

“I hurt people. I hurt you. I deserve to hurt. That’s fair. What’s wrong with that?” Varian wants it to sound demanding, insistent, but it instead leaks out like an open question, a genuine curiosity that he speaks with grevious truth.

“Because-because you were already hurt, Varian.” His father speaks, voice trembling as his eyes flit over his form, as though gauging for an opportunity to reach for him again. “You did all of those things because you felt no one would help you when you were hurt. And even if you made these mistakes, you were already in prison. You still should have received proper help. You were _already_ hurt, and you needed help. There’s…no reason for them to have done this to you.” He reaches his arm out slowly, hesitantly, as though he is about to touch an open flame, a beast that can bite, a thing he does not recognize yet knows to be there.

“But there is. I-I deserved it.” It is a truth, so it is easy for Varian to slip from the heart and spill from the tongue, as though fingering a loose button that hangs forgotten from an unraveling thread. He looks up, feeling the heavy, burning weight of the listening eyes. They burn in a different way, linger with a different scent, like the how the fumes of his explosions unpleasantly sting his nostrils.

“Don’t you see?” He says, more to himself than Quirin. “I-I made them do it. I was dangerous and I hurt people, and I picked fights with other prisoners, and I _couldn’t_ do my work so they _had_ to whip me, and-and…” Hysterical and hyperventilating, Varian gasps and scrambles to yank the last of the knives out, only for it to plunge and sink deeper than he can reach, the insistent burning now systemic and unstoppable.“I let him do it.” The first lie crawls from underneath the boulder is has uprooted, scrambling to infect and infest his father’s supposedly undying love with merciless fervor. “I let him-I-I told him to-”

“Stop.” Quirin interrupts quickly and lowly, short and commanding despite the tears in his eyes, though his hand stops from where it was outstretched to touch him.

“It’s true! You don’t believe I could do it? I was crazy! I’m still crazy, you know.” He speaks lowly, emboldened by how Quirin’s unsettled melancholy makes way for terror and bewilderment, arrant in the manner his eyes well with moisture and his figure nearly coils back. The docile recognition in his eyes begin to flicker and fade as Varian steps closer, bracing his hand against the wall to prevent what could have been an anticlimactic fall mid-sentence. “I am crazy and unstable and I deserved everything!”

  
“Varian-”

“If you really loved me, you would believe it! If you really think the way you say, you would believe every word, because it’s the truth!”

“No.” Quirin replies, almost harshly. However, it is still not the anger Varian is looking for. It is still not the father that old-Varian had been able to so readily anger so many times before. “I know it isn’t. Varian, you can’t lie-”

“You wanted to send me away.” Varian accuses distressedly, jolting to the point before anything his father says makes him reconsider his next sentence. “You wanted me to be someone else’s problem, and you should have.” He does not know why he’s compulsively pulling all of these strings from where they are sown into his heart, yanking viciously at every open end he finds and clawing tenaciously at the seams to remove the permanent taint it has left on his life. Perhaps the thread has been resting almost unknowingly with unpleasant weight, applying almost nonexistent pressure whenever he tries to believe the very people who had left him in his time of need, who had almost loved him but not enough to stop what had happened. He is allowed to be un-enough now. He is allowed to hurt again now. “I’m a menace."

“No, you’re not.” Quirin’s voice is still subdued by the hidden sorrow that coruscates in his eyes, sparking with tears as he tries to reach his hand out again, try to reach into the chasm of his turmoil again, as though checking for how deep the river is before he jumps in. “What’s making you think these awful things?”

Varian’s voice begins to waver as he pointedly ignores the question. “And I don’t care how much you want to get rid of me! I want to do it myself! I don’t like feeling hurt!”

“I would never try to send you away. I love you.” The tears cascade in burning trails down his father’s cheeks- precious, invaluable tears meant for only his son’s eyes.

_Now you’ve done it._ Varian clasps those words for dear life before he allows them to float away in the turbulent whirlwind of his chaotic breakdown, for it is likely the last affectionate endearment he will ever hear. This is it. The nail in the coffin, the gavel hitting home. He’ll have successfully made Dad hate him for sure. He’ll have finally snapped the man’s patience, sapped the last of his energy, pushed him to the ends of his tether. Because these words don’t change anything. His father seems to love using them now…repeatedly, as though they are all he needs. But Varian wants more. Somehow, despite the long nights of crying wordlessly into his shoulder and holding his hand as he slept, old-Varian wants to have more, hear more, hope for more, and it infuriates him enough to say his final words.

“I don’t. Do you hear me, Dad?” Varian screams, as though elevating his voice with fury and frustration will make it easier to propel nonsensical lie after lie impulsively, insistently, to the only person for whom his shrill, tear-stained voice will ever matter. His hands finally find his own eyes, clawing at them, wishing to block out the awful image of his father crying and the (doubtlessly) more awful rue that will paint his miserable face forever. “I-don’t love you! And neither do you! So stop doing these things for me!Stop lying to me, stop trying to stop me, stop _hating_ me, GODDAMMIT!”

A stunned and deafening silence hangs heavy over father and son. The only sound that reaches Varian’s ears is that of his own harsh breaths, interspersed with small whimpers as the heels of his palms dig woefully against his closed eyelids. His fingers brace against his forehead, which he realizes is drenched with beads of sweat.

Hesitant footsteps, until a hand finds his shoulder. It is a hand that is unsure of whether it belongs, clasped there against his shoulder as he always imagined it to be, hoping to help him hold his every movement with the pleasant weight of a pleasant sentiment despite the stones Varian has repeatedly chucked at it. The arm it is attached to does not hasten to embrace him-it does not move to hush him or stroke his back. It does not move at all. “I’m sorry.”

“Wha-what?” Varian stutters, aghast and perplexed, peeking through his fingers.

“Varian, I’m so sorry you think that way. I didn’t know how much I hurt you.”

The untruth - the lies burns worse when these words drip from his father’s mouth like venom, sweet to the sight yet awful to listen to as their teeth sink heavily into his flesh and charge poison through his being. Dad is not only refusing to believe all he has said. He is _misinterpreting_ it. Varian gawks at him, terrified at where this may be heading. “No. That’s not what I meant.”

“You’re right. I don’t have any right to expect you to be happy here. I don’t have the right to keep you here. I certainly don’t deserve to be believed in. I don’t get to choose how you hurt. I don’t get to stand here and expect you to be alright with telling me anything.” Quirin inhales shakily, as though even breathing a different way will splinter the delicate silence and all it can bring. “This whole time, I thought I was doing the right thing-but as usual, it has hurt you again. It has made me selfish again, thinking I know what is best for you when I am the one who has pushed you like this.”

His father’s admission should acquiesce the bitterness that had so boldly possessed him to spew lie after lie, foolish hope after frenzied horror, but instead, the words jar Varian more than anything ever could. They sound grotesque, monotonous despite the cavernous grief they are laced with. Perhaps it is because they are verbatim what he has been thinking, and hearing his own thoughts being fleshed out like this is gruesomely laborious. “Stop.”

“I deserve your anger and hatred. And you deserve to make your own choices.”

“D-Dad…” Varian can only manage.

Quirin’s eyes close, the deep frown cutting into his face. “I’ve never been enough for you, and I see that now. I am so _sorry_ , son. I love you so much.”

The words stab him abruptly in the core. His father’s head hangs low, eyes closed and mouth downturned. Were this any other circumstance, Varian would have welcomed the ironically familiar disappointed look-had it been disappointed at all. Instead, it is only sorrowful-nothing more, nothing less. It is devoid of all other ardor and complete with agony, plain and unabashed, simple to understand because of how difficult it is to misinterpret. It strikes Varian that despite his intention to sway Quirin of his pursuit, his tirade had inadvertently swayed Quirin of himself.

The hurt in his father’s eyes is too much to bear. Varian bursts into tears and launches himself forward into Quirin’s chest, fiercely encompassing the arms that had meant to encompass him first. For a trepidatious moment, the arms remain limp and lifeless, dead after being kicked away and trampled upon. It feels like he is pawing at amber again-trying to no avail to reach a heart he still does not know can ever beat again. Dad has every reason to refuse his belated embrace. Dad has every reason to turn away now, and leave Varian in the prison he has created. But as always, the familiar arms find their way back, wrapping their way around his hunched form, encapsulating his quivering shoulders and aching soul with a ready heart and a steady hand. The heart is still thundering, hammering unhappily from its cage of ribs.

“You aren’t supposed to be saying these things. I only said them to protect you.” Varian whispers to the upset heart, listening intently for its discontent bawls and stammers. “I’m sorry.”

Quirin’s hand comes to fondly rub at his neck, rhythmic and measured as though it is afraid to spark an unwanted fire. “Oh Varian, is this why you’re not telling me anything?”

“I did.” Varian insists. “I told you everything.”

“I meant the truth.”

“Why don’t you just believe them? Why don’t you accept _my_ truth? It’s easy.” It’s easier than chasing inexorable princesses and unattainable justice. It’s easier than dealing with fallouts like this all of the time. It’s easier than whatever possesses his father to wake up in the earliest hours of the morning to rub balm into his back and stay up late at night trying to convince him that his sleeping medicine is not laced with truth serum.

“Varian, I love you, but even if you think I’ve been lying to you, I have no reason to believe a word of what you have just said.”

“How do you know?” Varian challenges defiantly, though he staunchly grips whatever part of his father’s shirt he can find in an unyielding handful.

“Because I know who you are, better than you think I do.” Quirin must be lying again, once again choosing the simple yet eloquent response rather than a bluntly direct answer, but Varian can’t find it in himself to care.

“If you know me so well, you would know I want you to stop.” Varian accuses weakly, voice gravelly and throat parched from the shouting.

Quirin pulls away to hold him by the shoulders, kneeling down to stare at him urgently. “What should I stop?”

“ _This_.” Varian gestures animatedly at himself. “ _Everything_. You told Rapunzel.” Varian watches his father’s face fall, and slight guilt knit its way into his features. Then his father’s resolve steels, wrenches away from the sorrow that subdued it, brightening his eyes and visibly loosening the knot that throttled his heart. It is strange to fathom the fact that Quirin can be remotely relieved upon anything regarding him.

“Come here.” Quirin gently commands, holding his hand and guiding them to his bed. He props a pillow against the headboard and winds one arm around Varian’s waist to help him sit properly, knowingly wincing in sympathy as Varian grimaces at the quick sting that shoots through his back. Sitting fully on the bed, the man crosses his legs and leans forward, cradling Varian’s cold, bony hands in his own. “Varian, I only told the princess because I knew she would be able to help.”

“So…so you _do_ think I’m sick.” Varian tries to affirm, the ill emptiness returning.

“No.” Quirin ushers urgently, letting go of his hands to cup his face between his warm palms. “No one thinks you’re sick. You are perfectly fine.”

“You just said I needed help.” Varian sobs, head bowing.

A strong yet gentle hand hooks underneath his chin,“Varian. Varian, listen to me.” Varian looks up, sniffling as he tries to squint through the blur of tears. “You are not sick, ok? You are not sick, or broken, or crazy, or in any way at fault for what has happened. You were not crazy then, and you’re not crazy now. When we say we want to help you, it’s because we want you to feel better. We just want to take away your pain.”

“ _I_ can take it away. But you won’t let me.” Varian sniffles stubbornly.

Quirin sighs. “Varian, exchanging one pain for another doesn’t take away anything. It only makes you hurt more. What makes you think I will ever let you do that to yourself?”

Varian sniffles again, wishing to say more. He wishes to try one more time to convince him. He wishes to properly vent all of the frustrations he had catapulted upon his poor father. But another realization rattles his mind, far greater and significantly more difficult to quell. “Sometimes talking to you hurts.” Varian quietly points out.

Quirin only blinks, unfazed by the difficult point. “Yes, but doesn’t talking to me also make you feel better?”

“So does my knife.” Varian blurts out in defense.

“Really? How so?” Quirin keeps one hand calmly rested on his knee to indicate that he’s listening, leaning forward and silently beckoning a frightened Ruddiger to come forth. Much to Varian’s surprise, the raccoon leaps onto the bed without hesitance, sniffing his open palm before nuzzling into it affectionately.

Varian pauses at the trick question. He never really thought of it before, as ruminating upon the logic of his self-perceived madness only served to unravel the folds of his insecurities.His knife didn’t make him feel better per se- only that it made him feel numb. His knife-or rather, the stone shiv- had been with him through it all. He had carved it from a slab mere weeks after Rapunzel’s departure to crudely jab into the compact locks of the dark, cold prison door, only for it to grant him a much greater freedom every minute he was forced out into the much darker, much colder world. “I just don’t feel so bad. It makes the pain easier to bear.” It made the frosty dampness of the stone floor easier to bear as his blood seeped through the cracks on his knuckles, the frigid draft from the barred window seem inviting as he drifted off to another dark night with no father, friends, or future. “It helps me ignore it for a bit.” A simple explanation for a simple matter. Perhaps he could salvage some of his conscience after this ordeal after all. Perhaps a little bit of his father’s own logic could rewind his gears and cease his fears for even a moment with his precious knife.

“Weren’t you the one who told me that ignoring the problem doesn’t fix it?” Quirin answers knowingly, and Varian does not have the heart to berate his father for his clever comeback. He remembers saying this to his father’ uncomprehending, unyielding gaze in another time, another place, far from the apprehensive clutches of sharp, luminous anger and amber.

“I couldn’t very well do anything about it then.” Varian speaks almost accusingly, his grip on Ruddiger tightening. “And you don’t understand what my problems were. You weren’t there.”

“That’s _okay_.” Quirin cajoles gently, squeezing his hands tightly together. “I’m here now, so make me understand. _Talk_ to me, son.”

“I don’t…I don’t think I can. Not now.” Varian replies with a stifled whimper, knowing how pathetic he must sound. He concentrates on the comfortable weight of Ruddiger’s curled form sinking into his embrace, instead of the uncomfortable weight of his father’s eyes sinking into his face. When his father does not instantly reply, Varian looks up to find that on the contrary, his eyes remain patient and soft, glistening with compassion.

His father pauses, continuing to rub his thumb over his knuckles. “That’s okay, too. You can talk to me whenever you like, about anything you like. And if not talking to me makes you feel better, you can do that, too. But delaying and ignoring your management of pain will only let it grow, like an infection.” Varian winces at the sudden sting of his inflamed back pounds into him on cue. “You don’t want that, do you?”

Varian doesn’t answer, and he feel his father sigh, rub his hand carefully onto his shoulder, away from the roused wound in his back. “Is that why we went to the palace?” Varian questions, to which Quirin hums in affirmation. “But what is this all for?”

“We want to hold a proper court trial. We want to punish the monster who did this to you.”

“You can’t punish him. They won’t let you.” Varian speaks without thinking. The bold promise needs to countered and crushed before it is allowed to grow, before it manifests itself as a seed of hope in both of their troubled hearts.

“What do you mean?”

Varian quells the familiar surge of hesitance with renewed emotion. If anyone deserved to know, it was Dad. If anyone deserved to have this burden lifted from his shoulders it was this man that still opened his arms for him so willingly. “It wasn’t another prisoner. It was a guard.”

Quirin’s breath catches in his throat, his hand freezing from where it was gently rubbing into his arm. Trying to nod, he bites his lip. “Alright, I…the princess suspected as much. If the king finds out-”

“He knows.” Varian snaps, turning to face him urgently, eyes wide with despair. “He knows everything. The whip, the beatings, the guards. _Everything_.”

Varian watches as the unadulterated horror and disbelief pales his father’s face.“But…” Quirin pauses, as though incapable of formulating coherent speech. His lips open and close, yet the words remain stuck in his throat, a visibly burdensome feat as he swallows in vain. “He said-“

“He lied to you. He’s lied to us all.” Varian keen is severed into uncontrollable whimpers. “He watched them do it. He told me to tell you all of those things, and that he would kill you if I didn’t. He would rather you _die_ , Dad.”

If Varian thought his father’s wail when he nearly died was the lightest indication of a bare minimum display of emotion, he stands corrected now. Quirin’s mouth closes, bereft of consoling words and comforting gestures. The little color in his face plummets drastically, eyes wide and practically bulging out of their sockets. Finally, Quirin leans forward, eyes narrowing and searching his own. “Varian, is all of this true?”

Flabbergasted, Varian feels a shard of indignity bury itself into his chest, scaling and searing at the concern in his father’s eyes. “Of course it is. You don’t trust me?” The impact of it hits harder, faster than the first time he had felt angry at his father. Accusation and indignant vexation broils in his chest, eliciting another fresh bout of tears. Dad has reasons to not trust him. He has reasons to hesitate before he kisses his brow. He has reasons to hesitate before he jumps on the bandwagon of slander and suspicion that will become his every remaining day with his troublesome son.

“Of course I trust you. I trust you, my child. I just…give me a moment.”

A lustrous film of tears glosses Quirin’s eyes, yet they flare with a different flame, an inferno of hidden and unswept emotion. It is unlike any other time Varian has ever seen his father truly afflicted with the vagarious whims of pure, unadulterated rage. It is not a mere animal agitated by consistent prodding, a blunt edge he has been met with when he tries to stoke him for answers- it is a veiled force set ablaze, ready to maul and massacre whomever dares to approach. “He told me he supported me.” Quirin’s voice is detached, breathless with disbelief and realisation as his hand withdraws from Varian’s own and clenches hermetically, quaking from the restraint he struggles to grapple with every shudder of breath that stiffens his nostrils and draws back twitching lips to reveal tightly gritted teeth. “He tried to make me send you away.” With each peeling of the ripe knowledge, Quirin’s eyes flicker from where they are trained intensely into a concentrated flare at his clenched fists, as though he imagines the king’s throat in between his very fingers. “ _He let this happen_.”

“Dad-“ Varian never imagined that he would be the one to talk sense into his father-he never once entertained the thought that anything he said would be needed in his father’s ears.

“I’ll talk to the princess first thing tomorrow morning.”

Varian’s panic reignites. “Wha-NO! You can’t! He’ll find out.”

“A guard. That _bastard_.” To Varian’s terror, an unthinking ferity - an incomprehensible darkness blooms over his father’s soft features, crawling into the etched lines of concern marring his face and extinguishing any benevolent tenderness that remains. “I’ll kill him.”

The words strike Varian harshly, like the lash of whip, snapping him back to reality. The frightened yelp escapes him too soon-the unleashed fear and panic returns too soon. “No, no, no! You’re not listening to me again!”

Another pause ensues, followed by smooth circles on his back. His father’s ever-open arms encompass him: arms that opened for him when he was freed from his amber prison, when Varian rushed to him sobbing after another restless night, when Varian wanted to hide from the happy world and the scornful sneers of people ready to give him what he deserved.

“They’re going find out. They’re going to kill you.” Varian splutters with revitalized awareness, and Quirin’s hand immediately freezes from where it lies on his head. “They’re going to run a blade through you. _They will_.”

“Sh. No.” The soft, promising coo returns, and he would have mistaken it for Rapunzel’s, had a large hand not cupped his cheek or pressed him against his chest, shielding him from the very beasts that shred his expectations to pieces. “Don’t think like that. It’s all going to be alright.”

“No, it’s not.” Varian wails. “It’s not until you promise me you won’t talk to anyone.”

Quirin jolts instantly. “But Varian-”

“You’re going to hurt again.” Varian splutters, rasping between every breath because it feels as though every minute is being torn from him, the glacial grips of fear creeping into his every hope like amber, ready to torpefy his limbs and sear through his papery flesh. Any moment now can be their last. Any moment now is a chance to dispose of him and his father completely. “You’re going to get hurt because of me again.” Would his friends mourn his death? Would Rapunzel and Eugene believe that they had disappeared out of sheer coincidence? Would they sigh and tut pitifully, as the townsfolk indubitably would, at having finally known the true and unjust nature of his and his father’s inevitable demise?

“No, no, no.” Quirin chants like a mantra, as though saying the word will anchor them amongst the incomprehensible torrent of the remorseless river that seeks to pull them into its inky depths. “None of this is because of you, do you hear me? There is nothing you could have done that would make any of this acceptable. Just as there is nothing you can do that will make me believe otherwise.”

“Let _go_.” Varian sobs, pouring his every last ounce of strength in the final yet feeble demand even as he clings desperately to the fabric of his father’s sleeve, wanting nothing more than to latch onto the undeserved affections, the unending promises, the unanswerable questions for mere moments more. “Let go of me, before you get hurt.” _If you let go again, I can try to leave again._

“I am never going to let you go again.” Quirin rumbles, soft voice steady with an undeterred strength. It is all Varian dreads, yet at the same time, all he really needs. His sobs are now becoming dry, breathless, drained of all tears and too riddled to carry his fears any longer. He sags against his father’s chest, still stunned. Thick fingers smoothen into his scalp, brushing at the knots in his disheveled hair, the same calloused palm rubbing his neck affectionately.

“So it was a guard.” Quirin slowly clarifies, still breathless with shock. “And the king confirmed that he knows.”

Tearfully, Varian hesitates before nodding. What had he just done?

“Thank you, son. _Thank you so much_.” Quirin whispers sincerely, clasping his hand as though he has been offered food after weeks of starvation, in spite of the fate that lies ahead. For the minute, Varian wishes to believe it. He wants to believe the pride in his eyes has been rightfully earned. He wishes he can welcomingly open his arms, even hold it to his heart as closely and securely as his father holds him. Instead, Varian shakes his head. The very notion of his father thanking him for what he has just done-the axe he has hung over both of their necks-repels him to no end. He feels like a child who has confessed to his spill, rather than the victim his father and friends seems to see. He was not supposed to tell. He had only wanted to protect them until everyone forgot. Everyone was supposed to forget. _Everyone usually forgot about him_. With sour irony, Varian realizes the one time he asked to be forgotten happens to be the only time his father does not comply- and it had quite possibly cost the permanent engraving of his father’s name into a death warrant.

“Varian.”Varian sniffles, closing his eyes and turning his head against his shirt. “Varian, listen to me. I won’t go, ok? I won’t tell anyone. Whatever we do now is up to you.”

Varian slowly looks up at him, not moving from his position. “What?” He croaks, wiping away the film of tears that obscure his vision.

“I can’t make you do anything. I won’t try to convince you of what you do and don’t deserve. I can only advise you. I don’t want to take any risks where your safety is involved. I don’t want to do anything that makes you feel this way.” Quirin leans forward, the tender gaze burning into his eyes. “I need to know, right here and right now. Do you want to stop?”

Varian’s breath catches in his throat. He wants nothing more than to stop. He does not want to throw himself and his father into this circle of hell. All he has to do is say yes. Everything will be over then. Dad would forget, Rapunzel and Eugene would forget. Yet the same concern gnaws at his mind: perhaps it wasn’t so easy for him to get better, become better, until this was resolved. If something like that turned his world upside down, contorting all that he knew to be true… If something like that made his father weep, made Rapunzel upset, made Eugene sentimental, then maybe it would be worth pursuing.

“Will you be disappointed?” Varian instead asks, his uncertain voice cracking with his soft breaths. His father had worked so hard for this. _Rapunzel_ had worked so hard for this. Eugene had even _hugged_ him on this.

“No, of course not.” Quirin whispers, clutching his hands tighter. “I will stand by you, no matter what decision you make.”

It seems very easy to back away now. It is all he had wanted…was it not? That was all he had beenbeckoning for, silently hoping for. Does he want to be stuck at a painful standstill? “What if I get better? Will you still stay with me?” He cannot help it. He must know.

“Oh Varian.” His father lifts his curled hands to his lips, cradling them prolongedly against his growing stubble. “I will be so happy for you if you do, but I will stay for as long as you like, even when you won’t need me anymore.”

“I’ll never not need you.” Varian defends hastily. Quirin silently stares back, a sorrowful smile spreading across his face. Varian chews his lip and looks up into his father’s eyes.“I’ll…think about it. I need some time to think about what to do.” He shyly replies instead, quickly grabbing this opportunity by the horns.

Quirin’s eyes drill into him once more, before nodding morosely. He then pats his knee, trying to get his attention. “Right then. Let’s just forget about it for now, ok?” Varian is not so sure he can. The very crime he has just committed throbs like a gaping wound, its rivulets of blood trickling down his heart like droplets of oil, ready to feed the flames of vexation deep in his soul. “Here, lie down. It’s time for your ointment, anyway.”

“I’m sorry.” _I’m sorry it took going to these lengths for you to say those words. I’m sorry you couldn’t have said them in another time, another place, where you didn’t have to have your world shattered from its hinges. I’m so sorry I ruined everything you worked for_.

Quirin leans forward once more, large hand cupping his cheek delicately, thumb swiping away at his lone tear. “Varian, there’s nothing to be sorry for.” He assures gently before pulling him back to where it is safe, where he is safe. He says it as though Varian has not just hung a hatchet over their heads- as though every minute from now on will not be haunted by the anticipation of the inevitable.

Ruddiger reluctantly pads in, crooning mournfully with his ears bent as he tries to climb into Varian’s lap. Smiling, Varian carefully crawls out of his father’s arms and instead opts to lie onto his side, his head resting in his father’s lap. He cannot help but bristle instinctively when he feels the cold air rush against his exposed flesh, the rough fabric of his shirt brushing irritably against the abused skin, before he finally relaxes at the feeling of familiar, large fingers rubbing the cool ointment into the heated wounds. They follow a slow, smooth circular motion, instilling warmth and tenderness wherever they graze. Quirin’s spare hand gently finds its way into his hair, rubbing at his scalp soothingly, and Varian closes his eyes, trying to immerse himself into this otherworldly peace without the protruding, pulsating fear that courses through him.

“Son.” From the very fringe of the dreamless abyss that has become Varian’s every wary minute of near-sleep, Quirin’s voice sounds wistful and distant.

“Hm?” Varian barely manages to mumble with the soft escape of breath. Ruddiger’s fur tickles his nose as he squirms to find comfort in the little warmth Varian can provide.

“I need you to listen to me when I tell you this. It’s really important.” Varian turns slightly, tilting his head so that he can see the doleful crinkle of his father’s eyes and the solemn heaviness that deepened his frown. “You’re not crazy.”

Blinking, Varian returns his gaze to the content raccoon. “M’kay.” Varian merely replies.

“No, son. I’m serious.”

“Mm hm. Because sane people hurt their parents on a daily basis.” Varian mutters.

“Varian, the only one you’re hurting is yourself.”

“You mean like I could have if I got my knife?” In swerving away from the subject of the now vibrant purple bruise, Varian knows he has struck a sensitive chord. He feels it in the way his father’s fingers freeze from where they tarry on the gash in his side, resorting to maneuvering around and away from the mark.

“No.” Quirin finally answers with a heavy sigh, grabbing a cloth and dipping it in the bucket of warm water he kept at Varian’s bedside without moving from his place.

“You don’t think I can?” Varian keeps his voice as steady as he possibly can despite the unintended yet genuine curiosity that leaks into his voice, an accusatory challenge as his eyes lock on Ruddiger’s contented form.

“You wouldn’t be able to.” Quirin smoothly replies without pause, dabbing at the ridges of the gash gently enough for Varian to barely flinch. “I gave away all of the knives the night after you jumped out.”

Startled, Varian’s looks back at Quirin’s ashamed countenance, a picture of skepticism. Closing his eyes and flattening his fingers over Ruddiger’s wriggling tail, Varian frowns in thought. “But…you offered to cut apples.”

“Son, you and I both know Ruddiger ate all of the apples last week. I’m the one who yelled at him for it, remember?”

Right, he had done that. Varian bites his lip, subconsciously raking his fingers harder into Ruddiger’s fur. So that is how Dad had known something was wrong. _So dumb, Varian_. Varian does not want to pinpoint everything wrong with that statement, for another more alarming realisation rings in his head. “So you lied?”

Quirin does not say anything, still stroking his hair almost absent-mindedly. “Not really. After a while, I knew you wouldn’t try it again.”

“You have that much faith in your parenting, huh?” Varian forces himself to chuckle instead, though it sounds as dry and bitter as the sudden taste on his tongue. He wants it to sound admiring, endearing even, but the realisation clings to his conscience, like the particularly salty aftertaste of horrible medicine that forbids him from enjoying anything remotely sweet.

“Absolutely not. But I do have faith in you.”

Varian allows those words to sink in, unsettling the reins of his insecurity more than it should have. The bitter taste oozes into the back of his throat, sprouting into a prominent sourness. Dad had lied to him. Dad had known what he was doing, all along. What else had his father been hiding? How could Dad still not understand that his undying faith could get him killed?

“Varian? Varian, look at me.” Varian looks up, finding himself anchored to his father’s gaze “You’re allowed to be angry, alright? It is perfectly reasonable for you to feel upset and hurt. You can yell at the world, for all I care. But whatever you do, you must not blame yourself. You are _not_ allowed to say all of these horrible things about yourself. If you start believing them, how will you ever get better?”

_I can get better without lying to myself. Without lying to you._ Why was everyone so convinced that he _could_ get better? Since when was everyone so adamant to place their precious faith in his poor, miserly soul? Who had convinced them that he of all people could _get better_ , considering he was the one who had thrown himself into this situation, however indirectly and unintentionally? “Maybe I don’t want to get better.” Varian admits quietly, averting his eyes.

Quirin stops stroking his hair, tapping his forefinger against the crown of his head. “What does that mean?”

“I mean…” Varian contemplates how he should sensibly phrase this into words. “I don’t want things to go back to how they were. Not now. Not anymore. Not when I already know what it’s like.”

“Know what it’s like?” Quirin echoes, brows furrowed in puzzlement as he stares at his son’s face.

“To not be alone.” Varian clarifies.

A new film of tears coats his father’s eyes- a new starkness that dawns on his features, yanking downwards at the thin lips and clinging to the faintest tremors of his lashes. “Oh, son.” Quirin whispers, leaning over to gently press his lips against the bridge of his nose. “You’re never going to be alone again. You’re going to be a safe and happy boy once this is all over. We’re going to be fine. It’s all going to be fine. I’m so sorry.”

“Why do you keep saying that?” Varian finally asks, hoping the guilty exasperation welling deep in his gut does not boil over and leak into his voice.

“Because I made you feel this way. I hurt you too. I didn’t listen to you. I should have asked for your side of the story. I should have taken care of you sooner, loved you sooner.” Quirin’s eyes and voice are soft and mellowed, only for his alert ears and aching wounds. “I’m sorry, Varian. I’m so sorry, my child.”

Varian swallows away the painful lump forming in his throat, eyes blurring. He wants to deny every seemingly unjust and unfair accusation his father lashes upon the open wound he had left the minute he climbed onto the windowsill. He wants to dismiss these relatively small transgressions from a distant time that should not matter to him anymore, after all that has transpired. He wants nothing more than to say he forgives the man who, by all accounts, should not have forgiven him. But Varian knows he would be harming himself with a greater lie if he were to believe any of what his father had just said was less than the cruel, undaunted truth. “If you start getting upset too, then I’ll think worse about myself.” Varian half-heartedly warns instead, an easy compromise between all he wishes to say and all he can.

“No, you have to think good things about yourself.” The words are smooth despite the innocuous caution they are delicately entwined with, the tone light and warm as though he is a child again, though not quite patronizing enough to elicit a turn of the head or a roll of the eyes. “You have to give yourself credit for the things you can control. You have to be proud of yourself.”

“What should I be proud of?” They are strange words to hear leaving his own mouth. Varian had never really procured a high self-esteem, though he strived to remain confident in his endeavours whenever possible. He found that seeming confident made people believe that investing their confidence in him was not entirely pointless. His entire existence revolves around making his father proud-around the gentle, endearing gleam of his eyes as he stares down at him with awe and fulfillment, gazing out as his creations finally brought his sleepless nights and painful loneliness to fruition. How could his father possibly be proud now, bearing witness to the shameful welts that decorated his back, the pathetic attempts to walk on his own, the depressing mornings and silent evenings shut away from the world that had marred him-the world he had marked with his own darkness? He had once dreamt of such feats, yet now he is denied the luxury of even that, instead having to jolt awake screaming or silently weeping to awaken his father and remind him of everything that can’t be. He had ruined everything - first his father’s attempts to keep a secret, and now his father’s attempts to compensate for it.

“You could be proud of how strong and brave you are. You realized the error of your ways, but paid an unfair price for your mistakes. You managed to stay kind and good despite how much you were wronged.” Quirin lists fluidly, confidently, as his fingers gingerly swivel through the maze ofscars that adorns his back, meaning to alleviate every sting with solace and every sorrow with sincerity. “And you are a very, very smart little boy.”

Varian bites back the instinctive ‘I’m not little’ that bubbles in his throat, choosing instead to reach out and clasp the hand on his hair tightly, surely. It is hard not to fall asleep like this. “Do I have to believe all of those things?”

“Why not?” Quirin asks calmly, rubbing sleek circles into his temple.

“It’s too much to believe in.” Varian simply grumbles, finding the redundant phrases of denial useless and exhausting.

“Should that make you love yourself any less? Besides, I believe in it, don’t I?” Gently stroking a tendril of hair out of his eyes, Quirin presses his lips against his forehead. “I believe in you, because I love you.” There it is again. Those strange, disquieting words that are meant to soothe yet only incite another string of inexhaustible questions with no answer. When Varian doesn’t answer, Quirin sighs. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, ok?” With a pause, Quirin tightens his clutch on his hair. “But picking one would be a good start.”

And so Varian does. He indulges himself once more in these false hopes, the remnants of his failures. Because for some reason-perhaps it is in the way Quirin leans over to kiss his brow and beam with pride, or that he allows the dreadfully delicate silence to lapse in wait of his every word-Varian feels that he must. He must do it to get better. He must do it so that he can convince himself of the better he wants, even if it is not the best he can do.

_I am good_. It is a simple and insouciant phrase with little meaning, even as it washes him into a tranquil stupor and sings to his demons as sweetly as Dad’s voice, humming just above him in harmonized fragments of a pleasant melody.He chooses it because it means he does not have to forgive himself entirely. It means that he mustn’t lose sight of what has happened and what has yet to happen. It means that he can peacefully and self-assuredly accept a comfortable mediation between the worlds he has always been torn between, the vast chasms of different darknesses he has been forced to seek refuge in. He can believe he will still be someone worth Dad’s gentle smiles and Eugene’s soft chuckles and Rapunzel’s sad gaze. He will believe it.He must believe it.

But for now, he needs for it to mean as little as possible.

_I am good_. Varian thinks as he feels his father’s fingers weave through his hair, stopping only to cap the bottle of medicine.

 _I am good_. He thinks as he is lifted off of the bed and onto his father's lap.

“I am good.” He experiments it on his tongue, the weight refreshing and foreign to him all the same. He allows it to wring into the light silence, tremor under the peace of the moment.

“You are the best boy.”

“I am good.” Varian merely repeats, not willing to indulge himself too much yet. His thoughts remind him of butterflies he used to catch with his mother-delicate, wistful things that could never be held too strongly for too long, only to have slipped too easily out of his hands as a result.It should feel like a beautiful thing, something that washes away the dark lichens that cling to his doubts, but it is unstable and unready. It needs to be tested, analyzed, prodded for all possibilities and outcomes. Varian doesn’t want to throw himself so far into the loop of luck to believe in something incapable of fluttering into his reach even by chance. His mind catches it, over and over again, like a mantra. It ceases the waves, calms the storm, seeps into his being and purifies him of the dark plague that courses through him, the lingering darkness that he must now accept and move past. “Dad?”

“Hm?”

“Can I listen to your heart?”

Quirin gives him a strange look before complying, wisely choosing not to question it.

Varian rests his head against the heart, measuring every gentle thrum to his ear. “I am good.” Varian whispers to the now calm, pacified heart, as though feeding it the belief it wants will be a sufficient payment for feeding him the affection he needs.

“Yes, you are. My good boy.” He feels Quirin’s rumbling voice blossom from his throat, the strong arm curling around him tighter, pressing him closer to the still-beating heart, the still-concerned gaze, the still-listening ears, the still-believing soul that can so willingly hold him after all that has transpired. For the first time that day, Varian allows himself to succumb to the present moment and all it holds, no longer afraid of resisting the dark hole he often finds himself clambering to escape whenever he relaxed: the gratifying warmth that seeps from Dad’s soft chest into his being as he sinks into the embrace, the scent of fresh vegetables and aging wood from the fur coat tickling his cheeks, the tenderness of the hands cushioning his head and gently rubbing his neck, the strength of the burly arms holding him together and in place as he fell apart.

The phrase lingers in his head even as he drifts to sleep, flickering like a flame in the darkness, a light he can now reach and hold before he has to rise again tomorrow, fight again tomorrow. As long as he expect it to be there, it will never disappear. Like Quirin’s heavy hand on his chest, it will never disappear. Like the unseen shackles on his untamed feet, it will never disappear.

Varian realizes that he must continue to believe it, however little the belief must mean to him.

“You’re my best boy.” Quirin whispers, and his world fades to darkness once more.

…

The first time he feels those eyes, he is shrugging it off, helping his father lift bags of grain into a cart in the barn house for their annual harvest.

“Wouldn’t you rather be experimenting?” Quirin asks gently, as though he is afraid to tread the subject. He attempts to keep this nondirectional, even casual as he keeps his eyes trained on the barrow. “I can help you clean the lab if you like.”

Truth be told, Varian finds it is extremely difficult to do any alchemy when he feels like this. It is much easier to let his mind wander, doing empty things with emptier purpose. Besides, experimenting meant going to his lab, which meant facing another past shockwave of unbridled horror at the yet-to-be-cleaned disaster that he had come to associate with his downfall. Like the faint and almost nonexistent stain of long-evaporated volatile solutions, it lingered uncomfortably in the flat, stale air, unwanted and unneeded. “I don’t feel like it.” Varian simply replies, not meeting his father’s arrantly concerned gaze as he wipes his hands against his trousers.

Had he just lost an opportunity? Had he just avoided a catastrophe?

Just then, a villager rushes in, stumbling across the doorway. “Quirin! Thank goodness you’re ok!” The villager’s gleaming, expecting eyes are trained on Quirin, as always, but Varian cannot help but wonder if he is avoiding him on purpose. He merely stands there, silently hoping that whatever it is that the villager intends remains.

Quirin smiles good-naturedly, though it does little to qualm the slight confusion that tightens his lips and furrows his brows. “Of course I’m alright. I told you I was taking care of Varian, didn’t I?”

At the mention of his name, the villager’seyes flit to Varian immediately, and his face falls. Varian watches with shame as a dark shadow of gloom looms over the formerly ecstatic expression.

“Yes. I was told.” He admits somberly. “Anyways, I was going to talk to you about our harvest.”

As his father and the man begin to discuss and converse, Varian veers off to the side and surreptitiously roams his eyes over the bright landscape. Ruddiger ought to be here, somewhere…

“Can’t you, Varian?” Varian jolts from his trance at the sound of his name, forcing his eyes to immediately focus on his father’s gentle gaze and not the villager’s uneasy fidgeting.

“H-huh?” Varian breathes. He hadn’t expected for his father to be talking about him even remotely, especially not to this villager.

“We were just talking about increasing our production yield of grain because of stock shortages. Do you think there’s a way for you to do that? An _invention_ , perhaps?” Quirin emphasizes pointedly despite the patient smile and the hasty sideways glance to the villager.

Of course. Varian should have expected for his father to find some way to involve him again. He should have expected for Quirin to be the one who reached out to the village in an attempt to advocate his support and trust in him

_Darn it, Dad, not now._ What would it take for his father to give up? Why wasn’t Dad seeing that his efforts were useless, that no one would trust him after what he had done, that he couldn’t even trust himself? How many scornful glares or paranoid whispers would Varian have to bear for his father to finally be jarred back to earth?

No sooner had his father said it, however, had the villager jolted in shock, as though he had been burned. “Ehem, that’s really not necessary.” He quickly interjects before Varian can even entertain the thought, waving his hands in an attempt to further his show of insistence. “The boys and I can just make do with what we have.”

“I insist. Varian has come up with excellent concoctions for the cabbage patches and critter traps before. I am sure he can think up something for-“

“It’s fine, Quirin.” The icy tone cuts through the thin air like a knife, ready to shatter the brittle thing that is Varian’s confidence from the very foundations. “Really.”

Quirin blinks, frown deepening as Varian’s eyes widen. Villagers had never interrupted his father before. Quirin was always held to the highest esteem and addressed with utmost reverence, even by those who disagreed with him. It was almost an implicit agreement that Quirin was always heard.

Varian instinctively shrinks back, wishing for the earth to swallow him whole right there. It was one thing for him to pay for the consequences of his actions-it was another for his father to reap those consequences on his own, especiallywhen he already tried so hard juggling both his son and his work.

“Alright. If you’re satisfied, you certainly don’t have to.” Quirin clears his throat uncomfortably, and Varian can practically see the gears churning in his father’s mind, scrambling for another way, scouting for another path he can pave. “But if you do have any concerns, please do not hesitate to let me know.” Quirin finally adds, sighing as he prepares to go back to his work.

As he watches the villager leave, Varian wonders if he should express his concerns to his father. “I can’t invent, Dad.” Varian insists as he hauls another pumpkin into the crate.

“Why not?” Quirin instead stares back at him blankly, the slightest slivers of confusion.

“I-my gloves.” Varian uncurls his hands as a silent gesture. He watches his father’s face dawn in realisation and guilt, before the man comes up to him and places a gentle hand on his shoulder.

“I’m sorry. I completely forgot. We’ll try to get you a new pair whenever we find the time.” He rubs his son’s shoulder when he looks down. “How about some new clothes, too? Hm?”

Varian blushes. Surely, he’s not serious. He was not worth the trouble. Besides, clothes were just meant to cover. What was the point of getting new ones? “That’s not necessary. These clothes are fine.”

“No offense, son, but these are falling apart.” Quirin chuckles, lightly yet pointedly pinching the meager patch he had sown onto his shoulder. Instead of eliciting a light-hearted chuckle as it should have, the comment instantly imbues Varian with shame and self-consciousness. He was the son of the village leader. The least he could do was make himself look presentable. But as usual, he had gone and immersed himself in his own hobbies without a care, managing to convince himself that his innovations could improve things around here-uncaring of how people would see his father if he failed, uncaring of how his father often labored alone, uncaring of the many times his creations tore themselves apart. And this comment had come from his father, a careful and eloquent man-not from Eugene, who had a bad habit of making frivolous comments without thinking. Surely, his father would not joke about something like this. Surely, it held some weight.

“I’m sorry.” Varian mutters without thinking, the shame smoldering in his cheeks as the first inevitable sting of tears pricks his eyes.

His father’s teasing smile fades, replaced with a concerned frown as he carefully turns his son to face him. “What are you apologizing for?” He asks softly, his hand still heavy on his shoulder. Varian bites his lip. He does not quite know the answer to that, either. “I was only joking, son.” Right. Right, Dad had been joking. He knew that. Varian rapidly wipes at his eyes, feeling self-reproach and disgust claw and kick at his dwindled confidence. Why was he being so stupendously sensitive lately? _Stop it. Stop making it such a big deal._ “I’m the one who should be sorry. It’s my job to provide for you.”

“ _Dad_.” Varian cannot believe he is getting so worked up over clothes. _Clothes_ , of all things! Could he really not go a minute without forcing his father to feel sorry for himself, dragging him along into his pity party? Did he need to add another reason for Dad to think he was made of glass? What kind of a teenager cried when their parent tried to make simple talk of their clothes?

Varian nearly jolts in surprise when another villager pokes his head out of the door , and the villager already present gives him an odd look. “Quirin! The chicken coop collapsed again!”

“We will be right there.” Quirin automatically replies, grabbing his satchel and his son’s hand.

The villager winces almost apologetically. “This can take a while.”

“I am well aware.” Quirin counters matter-of-factly.

A dark blush paints the villager’s face instantly, and it blooms in Varian’s chest like an agonizing plaque. “Actually, Dad, I think I want to stay.” He almost whispers, hoping his voice doesn’t tremble.

Quirin’s face falls. “Varian-.” He pauses tentatively, stopping short of what he wants to say.

“Are you sure?”

“Y-yes, I want to do research instead.” Varian prays his father will accept this. He has no intent of doing so, and quite possibly might resort to merely sitting in his room for hours, awaiting Ruddiger’s return from his morning hunt. Anything seems better than committing himself to hours upon hours of standing at a fallen chicken coop, fumbling awkwardly amongst those scrutinizing, untrusting eyes and uncomfortable grimaces.

Quirin’s eyes slant in contemplation, brows furrowing and lips tightening before he nods hesitantly. “Oh, alright. Just-” He comes forward, kneeling so that he can stare directly at his face, his heavy hand finding its perch on his significantly smaller shoulder. “Just tell the neighbors if you need anything. They’ll come get me right away.”

Varian nods and hums to affirm he’s listening, his eyes unable to hold his father’s intensely piercing gaze and instead traveling to the relieved look on the villager’s face. He would sooner collapse from one of his own panic attacks than contact the neighbors for any reason at all.

“I’ll see you later. Don’t forget to eat the lunch I left in the cooler.” His father whispers, and gently pulls him into another embrace. Varian clutches onto him tightly, attempting to quash the thousand fears rampantly rushing through his mind. Dad would be fine. Dad was with people who respected and adored him. Without him around, Dad would be safe. As long as he stayed as far away as possible, Dad would stay safe. “I love you.” Varian whispers into his fur vest, hoping it will reach only his ears. He wishes for it to convey the silent apology strayed under the layers of hope that have become too suffocating to be consoling and too jarring to be unreal.

A soft kiss on his forehead, followed by a quick ruffle of the hair. It is barely there, and it barely stays, but the silent guilt in it clings to Varian’s empty heart. “I love you too, son.” With that, Quirin leaves with the villager, who finally breaks away from his withering glare in Varian’s direction.

“Good man, your father, is he not?”

Varian whips around to find the tyrant of his torment nonchalantly slumped against the wall of the alleyway, smirk yielded like a sword ready to slice. The world comes to a stop, his line of sight only fixated on the very eyes that fasten him to where he stands. With avid delight, this man had carved his skin and consumed his screams in the darkest of nights, the whispered taunts and penetrating gaze thriving still in the cold shivers he is struck with as he cowers under his father’s well-meaning caresses, the terrible twinge in his side as he attempts to limp his way across his own room, the jolt he is awakened with from the faintest grips of sleep whenever the deceitful image of his deft fingers drizzles into his mind, tightening around his throat and hooking into the waistband of his torn pants… “What are you doing here?” His gasps breathlessly, his heart leaping into his throat as it hammers and fractures his sentences.

“So loyal to his son and villagers. So quick to believe that everything can be normal again.” The guard intentionally avoids the question, bending over slightly to pick and effortlessly juggle a few apples. Varian does not have the heart to tell him those are apples his father specifically picked for Ruddiger, hands twitching and trembling from where they are clasped over his arms, hugging himself. It feels terribly strange to see the man like this, clothed in a casual tunic and trousers without the daunting, infallible armor to make him look larger than he actually is. “You know, there’s a phrase for that.”

“Unlike the king?” Varian manages, inwardly grimacing at his sore lack of courage to compensate for his loss of wit.

“ _Done for_.”

Heart skipping a beat, Varian quickly looks in the direct his father left, relieved to find him having stopped to amicably socialize with another villager on his way to the coop. “Don’t hurt my Dad. Please, don’t hurt him.” He pleads, despite how the guard narrows his eyes at a particular apple, uninterested in proper conversation.

“That all depends on you, really.”

Something about the alarmingly pungent threat sparks a renewed rage within Varian. “I told him everything the king told me to.” He seethes through gritted teeth, auspiciously unnerved at the way the man still does not seem notice nor care for his presence. “He is going to stop. You don’t have to come. Get out.”

The guard smirks, raising his brow. “Or what? What are you going to do? Can you do anything, from the position you’re in?”

“What are you talking about?” Varian demands, though he cannot help but feel his courage falter. He sweeps one surreptitious glance around the barnhouse. If there is anytime he wishes for his furry raccoon to trot in and hiss at menacing strangers, this is it.

“If anything were to happen to Quirin, you would be the first to blame, would you not? After all, it’s not like the villagers have undying faith in your reformation.”

Varian freezes, ponders this frantically. Had this been the king’s plan all along? To scare him into reacting, make him and everyone else doubt his sanity?

“What? Are your townsfolk as dumb as you? Will they believe that a guard from the good king himself-the same one that protects and provides for his humble subjects-is going to attack a peasant vassal that remains undeniably loyal to him, despite all that’s happened? Not to mention, the reputation he has incurred…”

“Reputation?” Varian cannot help but repeat dubiously, inconveniently remembering the villagers’ distrustful stares and dithering responses towards his father.

“Hm. Poor man. Laboring all his life and waiting on the king’s feet for his disappointment of a son. Some say he’s as crazy as you.” The man speaks impertinently, as though not expecting him to answer.

“My dad’s not crazy.” Varian speaks quickly, disallowing the venomous words from pervading his downtrodden speech. “I’m not crazy either. I’m not crazy if I’m right.”

“Right about _what_?” The guard demands, eyes fixating intensely on and penetrating through Varian’s being. “What exactly did you tell him?”

Bile rises to Varian’s throat, clogging his eyes with helpless tears. _Don’t cry. Not yet_. “I told you, I told him everything the king wanted me to.” He simply replies, heart stammering when his predatory eyes glower down at him.

The man approaches slowly, as though about to tame an animal, the malicious glint in his eyes wavering. “Really? So you told him about me?”

Varian’s heart leaps into his throat violently, unwilling to allow his voice any reprieve, feet inching away discreetly until his back grazes against the wooden wall. He wants to yell at the man to stay away, even scream for help, but the instinct this man has long since beaten out of him-to fight, to wail, to expect any hope or help-fails to get back up after being kicked down so often. His limbs weigh heavily on him, and his body is numb.

“Did you tell him about how you cried like a brat through it all, or how you begged me to do it?” The sharp, calculating eyes are directly inches away from his own, the oppressive weight closing in on his corner as the man braces one arm against the wall behind him, allowing him to lean closer and scrutinize him mercilessly with malicious rapture. “I don’t mind either explanation, personally.”

“No.” Varian manages, trying to stray as far away from his burning touch as possible.

“No, you didn’t tell him, or no, you didn’t beg me?”

_Both_ , Varian wants to reply, just to see the smug look on his face vanish. “I didn’t want-.” What was he doing? Why was he trying to justify himself to this-this monster? In one horrifically slow motion, his large hand reaches out, and Varian cannot bring himself to flinch away as he instinctively should. The thumb and forefinger finds his chin, pressing into bone heavily, as though it can control every movement of his mouth and every effort to speak. The touch is a gentle reminder to the scars it had burned into his flesh, the tears it had torn from the time he had wasted and slathered across his every conscious thought.

“Poor thing.” The man feigns a patronizing pout at his countenance, the predatory eyes still crawling over every inch of his face, leaving a trail of scalding horror etched in its wake. “You know, I was actually going to decline this assignment. Until the king promised me I could get away with a bit of fun.” He winks at Varian.

Varian’s heart sinks, and a refurbished rage broils in his chest. It is not the same rage that possessed him when his father denied him the knife-it was a beast. It was all a game to them. Once again, he is a pawn, a worthless piece in the vast chessboard of pain and prejudice. Once again, he must pay for something he does not understand, convince himself that he deserves something he does not, convince himself that the king would keep to his word as he had kept to his own. Fun. It had all been good fun to them. They had enjoyed tormenting him. Every excruciating lash, every scornful jeer, every eviscerating touch had been a cause of enjoyment, a coax for laughter. Every single thing he had managed to convince himself for the past year had been an entertaining ruse, to poke a battered beast and rub salt in the wound. This was what had possessed Quirin to stay up all night, weeping into his hair? This was what earned the horrific anticipation of both his and his father’s lives on the line? This was what he had been willing to compromise his own dignity for? The very people who had been assigned to protect him-to help him- were merely having a laugh, at the expense of his sanity and his father’s safety.

With a sudden cry of rage, Varian pumps his fist and swings with all he has, pouring every tear of sorrow, every twinge of regret, every glint of malice that has glazed and glistened the eyes of those he loves into the one man he hates the most. Unlike his first uncoordinated swing of the hand, this punch is robust and timed, measured as it makes swift and immediate contact with flesh. It digs further into the skin, meeting bone as the man’s startled cry briefly jerks him out of his trance. Varian watches with almost gruesome fascination as the man curls away, a trembling hand cradling his cheek, eyes squeezed tightly shut as the blood drained from his face. His mouth is hanging open, trying to close as he openly groans in agony, eyes wide with terror and shock. For a moment, Varian reels back, horrified. He is responsible for the fear in these eyes, the astonishment and caution that slowly dawns on this face.

“You are crazy, _boy_.” The guard spits with rancour, and Varian feels the last of his sympathy plunge back into the depths of his anger, allowing a simple yet strained mask of surety. “When will it get through that thick skull of yours? You’re crazy and dangerous, so you need to go somewhere where you can’t hurt anyone.”

Flared with indignance, Varian snaps. “I’m not _trying_ to hurt anyone.” _I didn’t hurt a person. I hurt a psychopath._

“Perhaps not now, but you cannot deny that people can get hurt because of you, in more ways than one.” The guard simply states, gesturing to Quirin’s retreating figure in the distance.

The cold dread plunges into his stomach, and Varian cannot take it anymore. “Stay away from my father. I’m serious.”

“Oh?” The guard challenges, a shallow, hoarse bark of mocking laughter escaping him despite his uneven breaths and gasps of pain.

“I am.” Varian insists vehemently.“I’m not wrong. I’m not crazy. I’m good.” He chants it repeatedly like a mantra, a protective shield against whatever those eyes wish to do to him.

The guard chuckles softly, chucking his last piece of wood into a corner. “See you around, little man.” He turns away, and Varian’s indignation only intensifies along with his self-reproach. Unlike his time with the king, the anger does little but seethe harmlessly in his chest, unwilling to lash out at his once-tormentor. He should feel powerful. The anger is supposed to curl its tendrils underneath the crushing burden that slumps his shoulders, imbue a smile to his lips and a smoulder to his lies, yet he cannot bring himself to yield anything more than the bare, futile hope upon whose shoulders he cries.

“You won’t win!” He calls out as the distance between them grows with each step and the sunlight upon them fades with each minute. “You can’t, because you are the one who’s wrong! You are the one who will _pay_!” The word unintentionally slips from his mouth. He remembers the cold slivers of its power as it once dripped off of his tongue, coruscating within the hollow chasms of his wilted heart as he stared into the distance, mind flooded with the bare sheen of the amber in the moonlight and the bare, inescapable truth of all he had to do.

The guard stops and whips around, fixing him with a mistrustful raise of the brow and a jaundiced glare. It is neither amused nor frightened, yet it elicits an unconscious flinch from him nevertheless. “I had thought you of all people would know who must pay for matters such as these.” He leaves Varian in the vindictive clutches of his own rueful silence, as he often has in a place not no far from here, a time not so different from now.

Only now, Varian mustn’t believe that it will last long enough.

…

He feels those burning eyes as he slowly walks up to the shelves of the only book shop in Old Corona. Varian had figured he needed something to start with. He tries to convince himself that it was not because he had been belatedly enthused by his father’s idea. It was not because he had once again felt an itch in his fingers at the mere prospect of simply holding a screwdriver again. It was not because he finds himself short of breath and words when he captures a rare glimpse of his father’s crestfallen countenance as he morosely uproots pumpkins.

Varian’s trailing fingers pause at the familiar spine of _Polyalchemical Substration Testing_ , remembering with distaste how he had found his personal copy destroyed in the ruins of his lab. He decides it can just be a base, a start. If he found enough information to give him an idea, he would pursue it from there. Otherwise, he would then have reason to let it go. He would be satisfied he had done all he could.

His thumb barely grazes over the deep purple binding of a particularly thick book, _Coronan Law and Legislation_ , when his heart stutters in place at the sight of those familiar eyes, the irrefutable burden of that inescapable weight. They linger for a moment in the window, scanning through the shop before finally locking on him, freezing him in what has to be the most petrifying moment of his life. Varian unconsciously backs away, nearly knocking the book stand over. The eyes disappear as suddenly as they came, and Varian rushes to make his purchase before he has the misfortune to see them again, only nearer and clearer in this cramped, dark space.

Ruddiger hastily follows him as he scrambles for the door and bursts it open to stop right outside. The street seems to be normal, if not slightly less busy than usual. It is not until Varian has walked halfway across the path to his house that he notices it.

So many pairs of eyes, drilling into and piercing through his very being. They burn, but not like the sun. They are an open flame, ready to set everything alight-slithering into open windows and open ears ready to believe what he already knew and whisper furiously about what he already feared. He hopes it is nothing. He hopes it is not real- _it can’t be_. He had kept his promise this time-he had vowed to keep his word and tried this time. Yet misfortune seems to never cease yanking at the strings of his fate and dwindling calm. Villagers he has never seen before begin to appear, loitering at every corner he turns and lurking in every alleyway he chases Ruddiger through. He cannot quite place it, but there is something startlingly familiar about the slate of his eyes, the twitch of his lips as he surreptitiously speaks to the townsfolk. He can feel them, tantalizingly tempting his insecurity at every minute by the cynical whispers of gossiping teenagers, the nervous jitter of giggling children, the ever-disapproving adults with their suspicious scowls and eyes ablaze with accusation.

Finally, it drives him with panicked fervor like a horse on reins out of the village and into the clearing next to the forest, gasping for breath and frantically swerving his head to make sure he was not followed, a startled Ruddiger dangling uncomfortably from where he is tightly clutched to his chest. He heaves a heavy sigh as his back meets the tree, sinking into the ground.

Varian closes his eyes and digs his fingers into his scalp once more, allowing the prickle of Ruddiger’s small paws against his knee to slowly coax him back into reality, the soothing chitters melodious to his ears as the raccoon crawls into his lap.

The people could have just been talking about him due to his recent return home. After all, they had always gossiped about him when his machines had destroyed another field, or nearly endangered another person. He did not expect them to act different after all he had done. But something about this time _is_ different.

Could it be? Why would the king insist on doing this if he had kept his end of the bargain?

The guard had only come to clarify that fact, had he not?

One thing is for certain: he and his father are not safe. The king was not going to stop this until he was absolutely sure there would be no resistance. Judging from what the guard had told him and the fruitless suspicion that dawned on him as he walked the streets, they were not safe even if they remained silent. If the king was under the impression that he still hadn’t told Rapunzel, perhaps he could get a moment alone with her and simply tell her. That is, if Frederic had not already assigned someone to monitor the princess’ every movement.

Trying to quell the incoming sobs of helplessness, Varian’s shakes his head again, forcing himself to inhale deeply, cajoling his every ounce of energy into pondering. He didn’t have to send something directly to Rapunzel, he realizes. Eugene…surely Eugene wouldn’t be monitored so closely! Eugene was street-smart. He could savvy his way out of anything, and no one would suspect him… _except maybe the king_ …

Varian growls in piqued frustration.

Convincing Rapunzel would not be a problem. But even if they somehow managed to contact Rapunzel, they couldn’t possibly fight a case against a guard that the king himself supported.

If the king saw Rapunzel fighting on his side, he would undoubtedly finish him and his father off before they could even return home. There was no way they could possibly pursue the justice they sought.

First and foremost, he would have to find an intermediary of sorts between himself and the king, preferably someone other than Dad, Rapunzel, or Eugene. It would have to be someone with almost equivalent power. Someone who did not fear the king nor could ever incur his wrath. Someone whose actions or resolve could not be crippled under his thumb or whim. Who was someone the king did not have under intense watch? Who did the king not constantly monitor, who could help or advocate for him without giving him away?

The image of only one such person abruptly flashed into Varian’s mind, whose gentle face and large, concerned eyes gaped back at him with expectance and hope. _Queen Arianna_ …?

_No_. What was he thinking? He had tried to kill her! It was he who had encased her in the crushing grip of his metal automaton, ready to wrench the life out of her pulsating, kind heart.

Why would she help him?

_So dumb, Varian._ He rebukes himself with odious disgust, wrenching out a handful of grass and tossing it out onto a confused Ruddiger.

A soft hoot trickles into his ears, and he jerks from his position, staring up to find two large, yellow eyes staring down at him. Ruddiger jolts back as suddenly, crouched into a defensive stance and hissing threateningly.

“Owl?” He inquires in shock. He knows Owl to be an intelligent, thoughtful creature like Ruddiger, who can understand language and situations better than most humans even. He remembers meeting Owl at the last science exposition, when he was helping Cassandra with her chores. _Cassandra_ …

He leaps to his feet, eyes wide and flitting over the poorly lit forest canopy. “Is Cass here?” He asks desperately, voice brusquely cashing in his throat with unease. Rapunzel had told him of what had happened to Cassandra - a quiet, single sentence spoken with glazed eyes as she had walked with him home to free his father. He had not been too attentive then, too bridled with the tremendous anxiety of what was to transpire to catch anything except that she had betrayed Rapunzel.

The owl stares back at him, blinking before hooting lowly, turning its head and ruffling his feathers as he exhaustedly tilts his chin downwards. The poor creature looks exhausted, its small chest rising and declining with each small, hefty breath. _That must be a no_. Varian’s shoulders slump in simultaneous relief and disappointment. He does not know what he expected, but it would have been nice to see her again. Peering further, Varian can barely make out something else lying on the branch in front of him, something he cannot quite see.

“Why are you here, then?”

Owl’s wings flutter rapidly all of a sudden, and Varian flinches in surprise before watching the foreign object roll onto the grass in front of his feet. Squinting, Varian picks it up and examines it. It looks like an exotic fruit of sorts, a lush red with bright blue roots dangling from the bottom.

“Is this a lead? On Cass?” Varian asks slowly, eyes still trying to discern what kind of fruit it was. Owl’s hoot of affirmation and the glistening sheen of the red in the sun finally settles into him heavily. “So you were headed to the palace-” Varian slowly speaks with dawning realization. An idea strikes him quickly. “W-Wait!” Owl jolts in surprise but does not move from his perch.

Tossing his backpack onto the ground, Varian tears it open with trembling hands, vision blurred and spotted as he finally grasps the familiar edge of his pencil.

Yanking out the heavy book with a pained grunt, he flips through it, scans over the page, and tears it out. Steadying his fingers, he scribbles on the back quickly, reading over what he had written and curling it into a roll and securing it with his spare string.

“Owl. Owl, listen to me.” He waves the roll of paper at the animal. “Do you think you can take this to Princess Rapunzel too?” At the name, Owl’s neck cranes unexpectantly, large eyes fixating deeply on his own. The owl hoots again, yet does not take the scroll. “It’s really important.” Varian pleads, staring up at the creature as though it is all he has left. “Please. My dad and I need her help. The only way I can talk to her is if the king doesn’t suspect anything. And he won’t suspect anything if you deliver this with the fruit.” Varian stresses, his arm beginning to ache. Owl’s pupils dilate, his dark brown eyes rich with understanding as he hoots again and, with one swift stoop, grabs both the letter and the fruit.

“Yes!” Varian cries elatedly, smiling for the first time since his father had been freed. “Yes, yes! Thank you so much!”

Owl’s loud hoot resounds pleasantly in his ears. As the figure of the majestic creature soars into the sky and out of his line of sight, Varian feels he must allow himself to hold that hope again.

…

“Hey, Freakian.” A startling voice reaches his ears just after he has let Ruddiger run off into the woods, sociable in sound yet seasoned from age. Currently, Varian remains frozen at the crossroads adjacent to his house, knowing that it would be a while before Quirin finishes the harvest with the other men. Though its owner does not touch him, the apprehensive edge catches his weaning hope by the shoulders, throttles it from where it was just beginning to enjoy the pleasant afternoon sun.

Varian turns to find Stefan, his neighbor for 4 years past, alongside a few other boys his age. Though Varian has had his fair share of childhood bullies, Stefan was an unusual fellow who kept his distance, even pausing to greet him occasionally on their way to school. He never partook in any of the gang’s antics, yet did not hesitate to offer a scathing remark here and there after another one of his inevitable disasters, even pointedly ignoring the boys if they did pick on Varian right in front of him. Some (inattentive) adults had even begun to assume he was Varian’s only friend, though Varian strongly disagreed. After graduating early, Varian had decided to resort to life indoors, not seeing the need to leave his experiments, and as such, Stefan and he had not since talked. The intimately familiar, instinctive fear strikes Varian like a flood ready to resume its course, though he struggles to cling to the small, futile flake of feeble reason that they’re older now- there was little to be petty or cruel about now.

“Who were you talking to?”

The cold dread convulses in Varian’s chest. Had he been so easy to spot? Had he been spied on? Had they known of the nature of his ordeal? “No-no one.” He quickly flusters. There is no need to give them leverage by admitting he talks to animals. Stefan nods, eyes still fixated on him intensely, crawling over every inch of his face as though scouring for weakness.

Varian briskly makes to leave, only for the boy to brace an arm against the wall, blocking his path to the safety of the open village square. Much to his disheartenment, the few passerby on the same road pointedly look away as they trudge past the group.

Stefan leans forward slightly, just enough to unnerve Varian into recoiling without quite scaring him into properly backing away. “I’ve heard you somehow managed to make it to jail.”

Varian’s heart wilts nervously, and his hands quiver from where they are clasped almost desperately over his books. He is flooded by a million questions, yet many more concerns. Perplexity plagues him with indecision over his response. Does he affirm or deny it? Does he laugh it off or visibly show that he is disinterested in discussing it? Does he grin and launch into an uncharacteristically detailed narrative of fantastical exploits as Flynn Rider undoubtedly would?

“Uh-yeah. Sort of.” He manages, inwardly berating himself at how unnatural it sounds.

Stefan whistles, and for a moment, Varian cannot help but feel relief awash him in a cool wave. There was no reason to anticipate an insult…yet. “Everyone knows about what happened, you know. The terrorism, the kidnapping, the near-attempt at regicide. Pretty sick, if you ask me.” Stefan quietly speaks, slow and careful in his selection of words. He leans against the wall nonchalantly, an unfathomable grin tugging at the corner of his lips, fingering a velvet pouch dangling from his belt- _since when did Stefan’s father give him pocket change_? “We were all just really surprised you went to _jail_. You must have really struck a chord with the king, eh buddy? Everyone thinks you were thrown in with murderers and… rapists, and the like.” He unexpectedly elbows Varian in his sore ribs, eliciting an inaudible gasp from the boy and an audible clink of coins from his pouch. Before Varian can react anymore than that, Stefan leans in to him again, as though whatever leaves his silver tongue is meant for only Varian’s ears, though Varian presumes that the boys who lean over behind him so keenly also await the answer Stefan does. “People have been telling me strange stories, and I just wanted to make sure it was true.”

Though it galvanizes his anxiety to no end,Varian merely stares back, speechless. What people? Who? He wants to ask, but finds himself unable to properly arrange his thoughts.

“Varian.” Stefan’s voice is lower now, thick with barely suppressed anticipation. “Tell me: is it true that you shagged someone?”

Varian’ heart abruptly skips a beat in a nauseating twist of utter shock as the words finally strike him like a swift slap to the face, draining him of all hope and comprehension.

“W-What?” He asks intelligently.

“At the prison. I mean, you were in there for a long time, and everyone says you weren’t right in the head.”

Suddenly, Varian hears it again. Surreptitious whispers, judgmental glares and mocking snickers. The shock deepens, effervescent with a cold, spiraling spike of dread that penetrates further into his stomach and blooms in his chest like a resounding ache. The indignant frustration and mortification of the whole ordeal crashes down upon him, elicits a trenchant bout of petrifying tremors up his spine and a furious blush to his cheeks.

When he doesn’t find it in himself to answer, the laughter intensifies into a nebulous howl of multiple jeers and sardonic whispers. “My God, it’s true.”

Whatever it is, Varian realizes it cannot be a praiseworthy image. “No. No, it isn’t.”

“Is so!” The boy next to Stefan laughs. “God, we always knew you were weird, Freakian. But I never took you for a _sleaze_.”

Varian does not know what that means, but still, every word jars him with nausea, jolting into his throat like bile. He’s never read it in any book, nor really bothered to accustom himself with the strange things people his age tended to use, but he can tell it is derogatory, dripping with venom as it aims to maim him swiftly and sharply, like an arrow to the heart. He can see it, in the way those sharp, judgmental eyes crawl over his face, trace his indisputably fumbling demeanour and ponder his shameful silence. The mortification flickers wildly in his gut, threatening to set his entire conscience alight with agonizingly helpless self-reproach.

“You’re wrong. You’re wrong.” Varian repeats, nearly out of breath. Every word feels like an unnecessary overexertion-he should know better than to stand here and expect anyone to listen. Varian still does not understand why he is not turning on his heel to walk away. He does not understand why a part of him (doubtlessly that _cursed old-Varian_ ) insists on staying here and actually defend himself from these…these horrid accusations, some of which he cannot even begin to comprehend.

A few boys even whistle, mocking smirks poised on their faces as they inch closer to him, surrounding him as they begin to poke, shove, and jab him wherever and whenever possible.

“As if being a traitor wasn’t bad enough!”

“ _Stop_.” Varian demands louder, curling his arms tighter around the book as he subconsciously hunches to avoid any possible blow. Unbidden tears broil in his already muddled vision, trying to kick down the abrupt fear before it grabs his reins once more. “Don’t-don’t touch me. Please.”

An unfamiliar hand embeds itself into the crook of his shoulder, and abruptly turns him, leaving his world seeming to spin more than it must. It all becomes a blur of color and movement, voices and laughter, then a stream of moments in time, imprints on his consciousness unravelling into a wistful, dream-like rhythm.

He hits the ground and it all feels so familiar somehow.

_The grating impact of his bruised palms against the wet floor, the cold and unforgiving glares strangling his wordless, empty cries because he knows he has nothing to say. They won’t hear it. They never have._

“Who was it? Another prisoner? Or did you manage to sneak in a guard or two?” The boy leers, roughly grabbing the collar of his shirt to yank him back onto his feet before he can crawl away.

“Stop it!” Varian cries out.

Another one pushes at his back harshly, a quick yet powerful force that almost sends him sprawling against the earth again. “It had to be a guard! I heard he had to be whipped into submission! Are you a masochist, Freakian?”

_Hands pushing him into the wall, pushing their full weight into his neck until his screams begin to die in his throat, pushing him into the floor as they roam over his pants…_

Another shove. “I heard he was alone with that strange man in the farmhouse for a little too long!”

_He is being shoved onto the floor, braced against it as the man brandishes his whip for a fresh lash…_

“Can you imagine the look on his dad’s face when he must have found out?”

The world is a chaotic whirlwind of words he struggles to identify and refute, unfamiliar phrases and unfamiliar hands forcing him to spin like a rag doll on a point.

A sharp poke at his ribs. “Does he even know?”

“Why would he be surprised?” Another round of loud, unabashed laughter.

_A burning touch trailing over his numb arm. He tries to move yet remains frozen as the hours unfold, unable to get away, get away, get away,_ **_please_ ** _._

And then, the face again. Those eyes again. Varian inhales sharply, but then he is roughly turned around with a quick jab of a large hand, and it feels like he is spinning. They tower over him, lips moving and brows raising as their words take turns searing into his being like a fresh knife.

_His sore back now ablaze with the excruciating pulse of an angry, fresh lash that matches the admonishing clamor of the people around him. It continues, his ears ringing with his own cries of pain and the strident shouting that wanted to encompass him, trap him, smother him completely. His mind slowly registers being dragged like a rag doll, tossed carelessly where his cheekbone impacts the wall and he wheezes with every crippling wave of newfound anguish._

A hand, burning into him with a heavy and familiar weight, made to hurt and jostle his every bone.

For once, Varian’s mind distinguishes between memory and the present. Before he can fathom what is happening, the formerly cowed instinct returns to lash and bite before it is kicked again. A shrill cry of helplessness escapes his lips as his arms swing on their own accord, and a distant, softer cry reaches his ears as his fist makes impact with someone’s skin for the second time that day.

…

Quirin is just finishing preparations for the last of the harvest when his good friend Ansel wheels some of the produce in.

“Quirin! I wasn’t expecting you here.” He exclaims with a strangely disquieted voice that plagues his usually kind and gentle demeanour. “I was under the impression you had…other matters to attend to.” Behind him, a few other men from the village follow almost furtively, settling behind Ansel and surrounding the two.

Quirin beams good-naturedly despite how the tone awakens an old apprehension in him, hauling the remaining harvest into a wooden crate. “Oh, I couldn’t be away for long.”

“How has everything been?” Ansel asks, and Quirin notices his lips are faintly twitching, as though straining to hold the forced smile. The men who accompany him remain strangely silent, some with their eyes downcast and shuffling awkwardly, others barely managing to steal occasional, disparaging glances at the befuddled leader.

“Alright. Varian is feeling better, if that’s what you mean.” Quirin answers tentatively, allowing the ominous gravity in the tense atmosphere don onto his expression.

Upon his friend’s pause, the man nearest to Ansel clears his throat and pointedly nudges the man none-too-gently. Ansel averts his gaze for a moment, sheepishly rubbing the back of his neck before speaking. “Quirin-we need to talk about your son.”

Quirin bristles defensively, stiffening his grip in an almost instinctual habit. “Oh?”

“You see, I-we all know the past year has been quite difficult for everyone.” Ansel concedes in that cautious, somber manner of his. “And it will take time for things to get back to normal.”

“I-we all need to be sure. Is Varian…alright?”

Quirin blinks, the anticlimactic rift ceasing as quickly as the relief awashed him. “Of course he is. I just told you he’s getting better.”

“No, I mean…” Ansel sighs, blinks rapidly as he purses his lips in barely contained aggravation. “Is he alright…in the head?” His voice lowers as he taps his temple with his two forefingers.

“What do you mean?” Quirin asks, baffled and desperate for clarification.

“I’m not trying to pry into whatever he’s done…but many of us heard screaming last night. Then you show up the next morning with that mark on your face.” Quirin bristles almost imperceptibly, and Ansel catches this just as rapidly, as though an animal closely eyeing its prey, ready to snatch it before it runs away. “Most people who come from the prison…aren’t very normal when they return. Surely, you must have noticed.”

“I still don’t understand.” Quirin fibs, though he knows exactly where this is going. “I told everyone that I hit myself when chopping wood.”

Ansel sighs, eyes closing and teeth baring as he curls his lips into a disdainful frown- as though Quirin is the one gnawing away at his patience, not the other way around. “Quirin, you know I trust you of all people, which is why I need to ask you to clarify something I’ve heard.”

At that, Quirin’s dread only grows. He inwardly steels himself-whatever leaves this man’s mouth, he will counter without hesitation, however untrue it is.

“Is it true that the king offered to send Varian to a sanatorium?”

Quirin nearly reels back in shock despite the predictability of the question. How did they know about that? He did not remember telling anyone, and the only other individuals who knew of his pursuit were Rapunzel and that Flynn fellow. Quirin briefly ruminates upon the situation. However they had heard of this, his trustworthiness will be at stake if he denies it. “Yes.” Quirin finally speaks, softly with what he hopes sounds like an automatic affirmation rather than the hesitant allowance it is. “He did offer.”

“So why didn’t you?” Ansel gripes much too quickly for his liking, sharp eyes glinting with an almost predatory attentiveness as he leans forward.

“My son is not insane.” Quirin speaks firmly, conviction solidifying despite the brief, searing memory of the emptiness in his son’s eyes. Was that sanity, or insanity? Clarity, or confusion? Hope or hopelessness? Either way, Varian did not need a sanatorium or a psychologist. Varian needed _parents_ , and friends, and for people to not drill him with condemnatory disgust at every glance or movement.

“I never said he was.” Ansel hurriedly interposes. “This is coming from a place of genuine concern, Quirin. Are you sure it’s safe…for Varian, that is…to be out and about with so many people so soon? After all that has happened?”

“ _Nothing_ has happened, Ansel.” Quirin insists obstinately, more to himself than the fidgeting man before him. He has an idea of what the man is insinuating, yet does not want to touch the subject-the very thought of unleashing his anger upon this man for even thinking this way about his son imbues him with a refreshing wave of simultaneous elation and fright. “And nothing will happen. I’ve just dropped Varian off at the book shop, and it’s right in the center of the village. I’m heading there after I finish with this wood. Besides, Varian has been stuck in his room for the past week. I don’t see how keeping him there would have helped matters any.”

Quirin stares back at the man, as though challenging him to speak further, question him further. Quirin considers himself a man of great patience, with no capacity for intolerance. Yet somehow, listening to this piques his vexation beyond the King’s words echoing in his mind. It worries him to no end that they all still think his son is dangerous. Words he had hoped no one would ever associate with his boy-traitor, unstable, menace-were now common synonyms that clung to his son’s name everywhere he went, like the nightmares he was so desperate to keep away and the demons that he fought so hard to keep at bay.“My son is not crazy. He just needs time.” _Time to recover. Time to think. Time to stay away from open windows and secret knife stashes. Time to fix the broken, broken things that seek to bend and best all we know to be true and all we try to be._

“But are you willing to pay what that time will cost?”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Quirin demands, eyes dashing between each man with an oddly unsettling mixture of simultaneous apprehension and accusation.

Much to Quirin’s relief and dissipating anger, none of them have the gall to answer. Ansel sighs and shrugs his shoulders, the other men retreating in defeat. “I’m sorry, Quirin. Forget I said-”

Suddenly, a ear-splitting cry sounds in the distance, stabbing into Quirin’s conscience like a flaming arrow. His world stops, his argument cut short, and his legs find purpose as he takes off, hearing Ansel follow closely behind.

_Varian must be in danger._

…

Varian gapes in open disbelief at Stefan, who is now sprawled against the dirt, crouched and curled up in pain as he clutches his hand to his face.

His friend’s burly figure stands over Varian, staring him down as though he is the scum of the earth. “What have you done?” He demands forcefully.

Varian’s mouth opens, but he is unable to speak, voice etched into his dry throat and breath stuttering in its wake. The burning droplets of sweat cause his bangs to cling to his forehead-his heart pumps almost dementedly against his chest as though he has run an entire mile, and his eyes frantically flit to the gathering faces of familiar villagers and furious vehemence.

Heavy hands on his shoulders, an unyielding yet familiar grip that grounds him back to reality.

“Are you ok? What happened?” Varian can barely contain his immense surprise at the sight of his father looming over him, his eyes riddled with frantic concern and distraught with panic as he frantically examines him. Unable to do anything else but stand there, Varian silently observes his father’s eyes with intent. Eyes trained to suspect and scout for injury, eyes that glittered when pleased and softened when worried, eyes that had held the softest endearments for him, only for him. Varian wants to bask in the comfortable familiarity that has now become his father’s attention…until he found himself watching in undulating mortification at the changing eyes, an uncomfortable familiarity from a time longer ago. Eyes once soft with concern now harden with subtle consternation, lurking just beneath the depths with coruscating flashes of dismay and doubt.His father’s eyes avert to the boy behind him, and the familiar discomfort magnifies into an immensely unsettling dread, as heavy and thick as lead, sinking in his stomach and coiling in his throat.

As if on cue, everyone begins to fire at once, much more conglomerated and escalated than the first.

“Quirin, that boy just attacked my son!”

“That menace!”

“I told you he’s not right in the head.”

“Poor man.”

“Poor boy.”

“Send him back!”

Unable to take it anymore, Varian bows his head, squeezing his eyes shut and clasping his hands desperately over his ears. It is too loud, too much to process, and Varian finds that despite his legs being petrified to where he stands, he feels as though he is falling, slowly yet indefinitely into the same abyss he so desperately tries to escape, the infinite and detached numbness that grows back to gnaw at and inveigle his very fears. He emits a startled yelp as a sharp, small stone grazes his cheek, followed by another that squarely pecks at his falling tears. Oh God. _Oh God Oh God Oh God Oh-_

“Enough!”

The cacophony of complaints and cavil dies immediately, like a fire put out by a flood. Varian can only hear the blood roaring in his ears, throbbing in thick waves of agony in tandem to his own uneven breaths. He awaits his father’s disappointment, his wrath, his admonishments.

“You all should be ashamed of yourselves!” Quirin instead yells out to the crowd, his usually calm voice strained under the pressure of the raucous amplification.

“ _We_ should be ashamed?” The man hollers, at the end of his tether. “Quirin, _you_ are the one who’s knowingly harboring an ex-convict in your home! You are the one letting him wander about free, when he’s clearly unstable enough to hurt someone. And you knew this, didn’t you?”

Before Quirin can answer, another man interjects. “That’s why you’ve been avoiding us lately, is it not? You knew you couldn’t leave him alone. He’s not just sick…he’s _crazy_.”

The word stabs another ring of ice through Varian’s heart, and it burns terribly to the point that he almost unconsciously inches closer behind his father’s back, however pathetic his cower might make him look. _I’m not crazy. I’m not crazy. I’m good._

“That is _enough_ , everyone.” Quirin growls, one hand raised in a show of restraint. “You are all entitled to feeling a little concerned over a small brawl between boys. You are not, however, in any position to talk about my son that way.” He still keeps his arm levered in front of Varian, as though ready to shield him from any rock and word.

“We’re not entitled to look out for the welfare of our children? We’re not entitled to say what’s right because it pains you to think that your boy can do any wrong? We’re not in a position to care if he hurts someone else?”

“No one is getting hurt. I’m sure this was a simple misunderstanding.” Quirin tries to quell him with a calm, steady voice firm with assurance and assertion, though Varian can see in the almost indiscernible way his shoulder tense with every word of complaint and every expression of despair. His father always gave consideration for what the villagers thought. Quirin was always held to the highest esteem and addressed with utmost reverence, even by those who disagreed with him. He never wanted for someone to look at him with indignity or accuse him of injustice. “If you have something to offer beyond these hysteric sentiments and outrageous claims, you are welcome to add your input. Otherwise, you might as well go about your day.”

But the crowd does not disperse as they are supposed to. They do not stop and listen, as they ought to. Instead, the whispers and complaints continue, though a bit more moderated than earlier.

Taking advantage of the relative silence, Quirin turns to Ansel and lowers his voice, though ensuring it is clear enough for everyone to hear. “This matter can be settled between us. I’m sure if both boys-”

“ _Both boys_? Who is the one who was punched in the face, Quirin?” Ansel asks in disbelief, pointedly glaring at Varian. “And which boy is the one who has spent the past year in a prison for heinous crimes against the crown?”

Varian’s face burns, eyes darting hectically to the alarming red mark on Stefan’s face. Every second of staring at what he’s done feels like another with dismay and regret. _Although, I didn’t quite punch him per se-_

“Now, stop right there.” Quirin warns, his voice heavy with gravity. “This has nothing to do with-“

“We know you to be a just man, Quirin. How can you claim to be a just leader if you continue overlook the fact that your son has done great harm before-in more ways than one? How can you protect or provide for us if you continue to fool yourself that anyone can stay safe in this village when this-“ He spits pointedly at Varian’s cowering form behind Quirin. “This… _boy_ has been rumored to have taken far worse than a prison sentence on his shoulders?”

A shared gasp reaches Varian’s ears as more whispering ensues, higher and louder than before. He looks up at Quirin, unsure of what reaction to expect.

Quirin is visibly trembling with rage. His hands-soft, warm hands that have held Varian as he fell apart-are clenched into formidable fists once more, trembling with suppressed indignity and unparalleled vexation. He turns to Varian and nods silently, at which Varian finally and gratefully relinquishes the last remnants of his courage to run down the familiar crossroads to his house. No one dares to try and stop him.

Heaving a deep breath and forcing away the sorrow he feels at watching his son’s retreating figure, Quirin attempts to collect what little patience he has left. “I respect everyone in this village enough to hope that you trust my reputation before any rumor.” He speaks, his voice less sharp and more filtered though it wavers in resolve. “And as such, I hope everyone respects me enough to trust me when I tell you that my son is _not_ dangerous. He was pardoned. He has served prison time. He has left that anger behind. You have no right to accuse him as you do now. We can settle this matter as we always settle disputes between children.”

The crowd mutters amongst themselves, yet Quirin forces himself to finely tune out the vice, instead watching Ansel haul his boy up from his knees and pat him on the back. The man watches the boy stagger back towards his own house before turning to Quirin with refurbished anger. “You listen to us, Quirin. That boy of yours has clearly not been right in the head. He doesn’t just dispute with children… he can hurt them. ”

Quirin sighs exhaustedly, pinching the bridge of his nose with his thumb and two forefingers. “I’m sure it was never his intent. Varian won’t hurt anyone. I’ll…talk to him. But only if you talk to your child as well.” Thinking better of it, he adds benevolently: “I hope Stefan fares well.” Ansel huffs, turning away to stalk after his son. As if on cue, the crowd begins to disperse, slowly and reluctantly, some even remaining to stare at Quirin.

Quirin turns to leave, pretending as though he does not hear the last sliver of words sneak its way into his troubled mind. “You’d better.” A gently nudge against his foot distracts him, and he peers down to see Ruddiger struggling to hold and drag a forgotten copy of _Coronan Law and Legislation_ in his mouth _._

_My poor boy._

…

“Varian?” Quirin softly asks as he finally walks in to his home. The sudden sound of retching echoes throughout the hallway- horrible, grating sounds filing into his ears, interspersed with soft cries that have been stifled for too long. Dropping the book and rushing over to the closed bathroom door, Quirin knocks on it urgently, unable to calm the panic in his voice as he poises one hand over the door handle. “Varian?”

The sobs pause, followed by dry, heavy breaths and the slosh of rushing water. “In a minute.” Varian answers from inside with a demure croak, splintered with sniffles and shuddering breaths.

No sooner has Varian opened the door does the boy immediately rush up to Quirin, catapulting himself to his chest.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Varian sobs for what feels like the umpteenth time. Quirin wonders if those words will ever be properly pulled out of where they are painfully stitched into his son’s grieving heart, a wound that will forever bleed despite the difficult truths he will try to believe. Sensing the despondent atmosphere, Ruddiger solemnly chitters before morosely intertwining himself between Varian’s feet.

“I know. Sh, I know. Oh, Varian.” He speaks softly, hoping Varian can feel the words from his voice rumble in his chest soothingly. “I know. It wasn’t your fault.” With a heavy heart, Quirin listens as Varian’s sobs escalate into wordless wails. However much he has come to expect it, he can never be used to or equipped for it. He can never steel himself against the normalcy that has become his poor boy’s suffering. Varian’s sobs cease, breaths faltering, and Quirin is about to scoop the limp figure into his arms and straight to bed when he hears something unwarranted.

“I’m not crazy.” It is a small, broken thing, a drifting petal from a dying flower wilted long ago through a tormenting winter, but it is a sign nonetheless. It is a much needed answer to an unneeded question. Quirin’s breath stops short upon the scent of the word coruscating in his ears, a soothing balm to the turmoil raging in his heart.

“What did you say?”

“I’m-” Varian inhales shakily, as though the strenuous effort of admitting such a thing physically drains him. “I’m not crazy. I didn’t mean to push him, but he started it. They were scaring me. They were hurting me. I didn’t do anything wrong. I’m not crazy.”

Quirin allows himself to smile, smooth thumbs running over the tracks of tear stains on his face. “No, you’re not.” The pride blossoms too suddenly in his chest, seeping through his entire being like a powerful, refreshing tidal wave, carving away at the clinging lichens of despair and self-reproach in the depths of his wilted heart. His son is learning.“You’re not crazy. You’re _right_.”

“Dad?” Varian suddenly asks, snapping Quirin out of his reverie. The boy scoops Ruddiger into his arms, and the delighted raccoon crawls its way up to the familiar perch of his shoulders, curling his tail around his neck.

“Yes, son?”

“What’s a-a sleaze?”

Quirin coils back as though burned to the touch. He nearly gasps. “Varian, where did you hear that word?” Varian shrugs, eyes averting to stare at how his fingers fidget from where they are clasped.

“Is that what they called you?” Quirin feels a sudden surge of blinding, white-hot rage, bubbling and threatening to burst from where it swells deep within his chest. The instinct to curl his fingers around his axe returns unbidden, to watch as it shatters glass and crumbles tables. How dare they hurl these impudent insults and obscenities at his son without a moment of hesitance? How dare they point their fingers in accusation when they were the ones who provoked him, nearly forced him to relive the ordeal, mocked him for an action out of terror and self-defense? Another alarming question chimes at the back of his mind, the very same that he had neglected to entertain earlier: _How did they know?_

“Dad.” Varian’s tugs at his shirt snap him out of his trance. “What is it?”

“It is a bad word. It is a very, very shameful thing to say. Don’t ever say that word again.”

“But what does it _mean_?”

Reluctance yanking irritantly at the reins of his doubt, Quirin quietly tells him, biting his lip and nearly flinching as he observes Varian’s eyes widen and wander to the floor, a dark blush painting his cheeks as his mouth twists into an ‘O’ shape. For a petrifying moment, Quirin can only watch as his son’s eyes glaze over with a fresh sheen of tears, the former flame in them flickering and quieting as though it wishes to shrink back with regret and shame. And then, as suddenly as it appeared, it returns.

For the first time since Quirin was freed from amber, Varian bursts out into a fresh fit of laughter.

For a moment, Quirin only stands there, jaw agape in open bewilderment and shock as his son’s sorrowful eyes light up with a foreign emotion, his once trembling lips tightened and stretched across his pale and ashen face, his bloodshot eyes closed and his small, dusty hands clasped over his stomach as he nearly doubles over. Though he wishes nothing more than to be happy that Varian is exhibiting something other than despondency, Quirin cannot help but feel that the laugh is dry and empty of the richness of pure delight, the smooth and natural course of elation that it should possess. It is not sarcastic, but it is terribly unsettling. It’s not quite…Varian.

Even Ruddiger notices it, for he instantly jumps off of Varian’s shoulders and cowers behind Quirin’s feet, whimpering softly.

Frightened out of his wits that this may be Varian’s idea of coping, Quirin hesitantly grabs his shoulders, firmly yet gently. “S-Son?” He both yearns and dreads to anticipate whatever Varian will do or say next. Much to his great surprise, Varian’s smile remains plastered onto his face, etched into an unforeseen grimace as he wobbles from where he stands.

“Varian!” Fearing that he will fall over, Quirin immediately wraps his arm around the still-laughing boy’s waist and tugs him towards a chair.

It takes the eternity of five painfully whole minutes before Varian is slowly wiping the tears from his eyes, sniffling as the last of his laughs stumble through his speech discordantly and fade into the awkward silence that lapses between the two, only to be fractured again. “Oh. Oh, that’s _rich_.”

“No, it is not. It’s _mean_.” Quirin urgently insists with alarm. He does not want his son agreeing with anything he had heard being said about him. He does not want his son beinso easily seduced into the qualms of negative language, especially not at this volatile state. Quirin cannot decide on what is worse: Varian being depressed about something as grave as this, or Varian pretending to be cheery so that he does not have to dwell on just how depressed he is about it. Both options sound equally trepidatious and undesirable.

“That’s…so, _so_ …crazy.” Varian breathes shakily, the teary smile still persisting, unresponsive to Quirin’s concern. At that moment, Quirin finally understands. Varian is _realizing_. Varian is learning. Varian can discern that is wrong.

“Yeah?” Quirin instead whispers gently, a soft and knowing smile gracing his lips as he tentatively reaches his finger out to stroke away the messy bangs from the startled eyes.

“Yeah.” Varian giggles breathlessly despite how his arm clutches around his aching stomach. Ruddiger carefully approaches again, leaping onto his lap.

“Pretty crazy.” Quirin simply agrees, as though he is a normal father gossiping with his teenage son, and not a nervous wreck wishing to scoop Varian up right there and coddle him to sleep with endless reassurances and promises.

“I’m not crazy.” Varian tests this again, louder, clearer, steadier with every passing syllable. The tears slowly slip out from where they had once strangled his voice. “I’m not a _sleaze_ either.”

“Don’t say the word.” Quirin quickly admonishes, the gentleness of his touch dampening the minimally stern edge of his already weak disapproval.

“They’re the ones who are crazy. They’re _sick_.” The word is spat out with such sudden disdain that it jars Quirin, and Varian’s gentle eyes are hardened with a new, reawakened flame, sharpened and shattering, glaring into space defiantly as his trembling lips thin and purse. Ruddiger’s head coils back slightly from where it was formerly nuzzling against his boy’s fingers, a disconcerted croon resonating form the back of his throat despite how he remains in his lap.

Quirin swallows thickly, the sudden shift in demeanour eliciting him to clench his jaw and battle with his words. He does not want to encourage his son to be angry. But for the first time, Varian is showing signs of healing. If, for a moment, being rightfully angry causes Varian to self-deprecate less, perhaps this disdain is healthy in more ways than one. Perhaps, just for now, Quirin can allow himself to indirectly share this unbridled yet restrained anger to compensate for the rapids of grief they have been veering and vying to row past, seeking the smoothest course to a near impossible recovery. “Yes.” He whispers softly, though he stops rubbing Varian’s shoulders to silently indicate that he has begun to falter in resolve despite how conflicted he feels. If no one would apologize to his son-if no one would acknowledge anything of Varian save for his wrongs, why couldn’t his son be angry along with him? Why couldn’t Varian feel wronged and hurt for not only what he has fought, but what he continues to battle?

“I am good.” Varian says it with firm and unwavering conviction, yet the underlying expectance in his bright eyes as he gazes up at him, piercing into his soul, coaxes at Quirin once more. Quirin wishes to agree with everything, because everything seems to finally be coming out right.

“ _Yes_.” Quirin answers to the growing voice now entrenched into his son’s heart and thriving with the bustling pride in his own soul. He answers to the silent question that lingers in his son’s eyes, sings to the demons that plagued their love with melancholy and tore their every moment of peace with delight, leeching off of every venomous word and dripping with what could have been his son’s blood. Quirin reaches out a hand-steady, confident, unhesitant for its destination- and it finds his son’s face. Varian reaches for it, clasps both of his hands around it as he tries to press his cheek against his palm. Varian clings to it as though he is the only truth, and Quirin knows that he must be just that, no matter what the outcome. “Yes, you are.”

…

Nigel watches them from where his chin is tilted high, eyes locked and scrutinizing every villager that hauls the produce into the carriage. Out of all of the people Varian should have expected to collect their annual harvest, Nigel happens to luckily show up once more.

Varian observes intently as Quirin effortlessly lifts the last of the produce into the carriage. Watching his father work instills him with a synchronic mixture of pride and envy. Though they did not share many interests, Quirin is everything Varian wants to be- assertive yet empathic, passionate yet patient, eloquent in speech yet simple in stature. Varian wishes for his height and build, for people to look to him as they did his father.

Sighing, Varian allows his mind to wander elsewhere. There is no point dwelling on what he had lost. He had done enough of that sort of rumination long before Rapunzel had returned. Watching the last of the harvest be wheeled in, Varian allows for his mind to conjure up another pleasant evening with his father and raccoon, which conveniently distracts him from the worry that neither Rapunzel nor Eugene has approached for the past few days. Owl should not have taken that long. A sudden doubt stings Varian’s heart. What if Rapunzel had followed the lead on Cassandra without reading his letter? Or worse, had read it and decided she would deal with it after she returned? Varian understands that anything concerning Cassandra is important to Rapunzel - quite possibly more important than his particular situation…but surely, Rapunzel would have left some kind of message, or even a messenger for that matter. Surely, Eugene could have showed up, or even that bulky friend of his. Varian shakes his head, watching Ruddiger prance off into the distance after a few rats. Rapunzel was most likely formulating a plan of action. He had to trust her with at least that much.

As the people begin to disperse, Nigel’s nasally voice suddenly calls out. “Where are you all going?”

The villagers look to each other questioningly. “Home. We’re finished.”

“No, you’re not.” Nigel rebuffs. “You have 100 more bags to pay.”

Varian blinks in shock at the abrupt statement, and many from the crowd mirror his reaction, some reeling back, others looking to Quirin with doubtful and panicked expressions.

Quirin shakes his head confidently despite the slight confusion crawling its way into his smile. “No, those are 50 bags of grain, as we pay every year.”

“But from this year’s harvest, Old Corona was due to give 150 bags of grain.” Nigel insists, eyes skimming his parchment. He haughtily waves it as though it is a badge of validation, above the heads of the concerned townsfolk.

“Wh-what?” Quirin’s eyes widen in disbelief, jaw agape as his smile vanishes. “Since when?” He leans in to squint at the text, only for Nigel to swiftly snatch it away, huffing indignantly.

“For your annual tax.” Nigel promptly replies. “It says here that an agreed sum of 150 bags of grain is to be paid by Old Corona in the form of your yearly yield to the capital.”

“But we usually pay 50.” Quirin persists. “Surely, you must be mistaken.”

“I can assure you I’m not.” Nigel responds disapprovingly, inciting a wave of troubled bickering and panicked whispering amongst the crowd.

“That is an unbelievable price!” Ansel begins.

“Had we been told earlier, we would have started earlier in the year!” Quirin carefully approaches with a different tact, seeing as his previous attempts were of little use and not wishing to cause widespread chaos.

“You were told.” Nigel speaks lowly, eyes locked skeptically on Quirin’s own.

“No, I was not!” Quirin resolutely shouts, though the heads begin to turn and the whispers begin to intensify.

“You were informed far before you returned from your week’s stay in the palace.” Nigel’s voice amplifies intentionally, allowing his voice to be carried to the crowd. “The king had insisted that the boy criminal be sent to the asylum, but because Quirin refused, he reclaimed the right of substitution and agreed to pay 150 bags of grain for compensation.”

“I did no such thing!” Quirin’s voice has become louder, rougher, though he retains his compliant demeanour, struggling to moderate a tone of respect.

“This is the report from the king, and you had it published just earlier this week. That is what you came to the palace for, was it not?” Nigel challenges, his nasally voice keen with rapture.

The hope in Varian’s heart languishes in betrayal and dread at the repulsion on the angry villagers’ faces. Had that happened? His dad hadn’t told him that! He looks up to his father, searching for a sign, a clue of what to do, but Quirin’s eyes were uncomprehending, even worried. “I did go to the palace earlier this week. But it was not on any of the grounds you claim.”

“It’s written in the records.” Nigel insists. “Are you suggesting that the king’s records are wrong?” Varian watches Quirin frown deeply, brow knitted in concern and contemplation. Why were they wrong?

The accusatory eyes fall upon Quirin, unconvinced. “So you did know all along?” Ansel asks, stepping forward and squinting his eyes in suspicion.

“Of course not!” Quirin exclaims, now visibly more discouraged that someone was believing it.

“Then why were you at the palace earlier this week?”

Quirin pauses, inhaling deeply, his fists unclenching. “I was investigating.”

“What?”

“Varian was unjustly hurt in prison, and the princess informed me that she had a lead on the matter.” Quirin states shortly. It is a mild and dampened summation, infuriatingly empty of all the things he wants to spill and accuse and deny, like a teapot with broiling water ready to burst. He wants to tell them about the horrifying extent of his son’s suffering. He wants them to feel the rage he is blinded with when he sees the marks on Varian’s body, the agonies on his ashen face that cripple his knees and batter his heart. But he knows they can’t, and so he mustn’t tell. He knows from the way their faces contort into uncomprehending scowls ripe with frustration and innumerable impatience. Nothing he explains on this matter will matter to them. He has to address the issue at hand. “Listen to me, everyone. There seems to have been a misunderstanding. I would never agree to such a price-”

“Would you, Quirin? You would do a lot to keep your boy with you.” Ansel asks with renewed irritation vivid and bright in his wide eyes.

“So…is no one going to pay the tax?” Nigel asks exasperatedly.

“We are _not_ paying that much!” Ansel practically spits. “We don’t even make that much in an entire year! And even if we manage to count up that amount from the granaries we use for winter storage, we won’t be able to feed our families anything but cabbage and poultry!”

“Take ease, friends.” Quirin tries to speak steady, though his voice trembles. “I do not know when the king made this arrangement, but he surely made a mistake. I can talk to him-”

“The king made a mistake? Quirin, old friend, are you listening to yourself?” Ansel’s voice directs itself to Quirin, as do one thousand pairs of eyes heightened with distress.

“Why should we believe you?” An older man’s soft voice inquires, sharp with accusation as deep as the unkind lines around his eyes. “Did you not lie to us about the king’s offer to send Varian away? Why is it so unbelievable that you would keep this hidden from us too, just so you could keep the child?”

“I did not lie about the king’s offer.” Quirin responds. “All that you now know is the truth! I will go talk to the king-”

“With all due respect, Quirin, the payment will then be long overdue.” Nigel interrupts matter-of-factly. “If you do not fulfill the trade by the end of tomorrow, we are going to have to review the terms of commendment and start revoking property rights.”

Everyone gasps collectively, the panicked murmurs intensifying into ear-splitting and hysteric yells.

“We’re going to be homeless!

“The king is going to strip us of our land!”

“Everyone, please calm down! No one is going to be homeless.” Quirin stresses, visibly aghast with conflicting agitation. He turns to Nigel pleadingly. “Please, sir, you must make an exception for us. Just this once. You can take all of the grain from my granary for now, and inform the good king that as soon as we meet the desired quota, we will send him the bags ourselves!”

“If we start making exceptions for Old Corona, we will have to start making exceptions for the other villages, too! We can’t have everyone bailing out on their duties, can we?”

Nigel states patronisingly, his ice cold tone slicing through the deadly silence.

“Even if they did give us an exception, we can’t possibly make that payment unless given at least two years of time, Quirin!” Another man declares bitterly. “And if we outsource in trying to pay this tax, when will we harvest food for ourselves? We need at least 5 bags of grain per family to get through the year. That means we have to plant twice as many as we usually do at the beginning of the season, which has already passed!”

“We can still make it!” Quirin persists, unfazed. “If we start now, we will be able to catch a few weeks of adequate sunlight before the rain hits! I am willing to offer everything in storage to compensate, too! But surely, sir, you must understand that this is an inordinately hefty demand-“

“You should have thought of that before you agreed and dragged us into this mess!”

“I never agreed to this!” Quirin snaps. “You all know that I always consult with the village before agreeing with the king on any terms! And why would I agree to these terms, knowing the strain this endeavor would put us all in? Haven’t you seen that I have offered all I could? Why would I lie to anyone about something that concerns all of us so greatly?”

“Maybe because you knew we would refuse, and turn that walking disaster in before you could seal the deal.” Ansel hisses, the condemnatory glower tightening as he makes his way over to Quirin. “Maybe you thought that the only way we could let you keep that _menace_ was if we had to choose between that and our homes. Maybe because you knew we would have to find a way to pay it regardless of what happened, and the stress of that would keep anyone distracted from realizing what a truly incompetent leader you are!”

The blow is quick and unexpected, so much so that Varian would have missed it had he not been intently watching every twitch of his father’s lips. Before Quirin can even open his mouth in reply, another villager speaks up.

“Apparently, you would do anything for your child.” The remark is cold with contempt and incivility. “And you expect us to do the same, despite all the trouble he’s caused.”

“I thought nothing of the sort.” Quirin vehemently insists, turning to the increasingly loud crowd. “I am telling you, the king has never informed me of this arrangement, and if he had, I would have turned it down before he even proposed it.”

The villagers pause. “So…you would send your son away? You could have chosen to avoid all of this trouble, but you immediately presumed that we would be forgiving as we always are, and agree to this exchange anyway?” Ansel asks carefully, brows heavy with thought.

“No!” Quirin hastily interjects. “There is no need to blow this out of proportion.”

“How about…” Ansel states, treading up to Quirin and glaring directly at him.“We give him Varian instead?”

“No!” The cry is one of horror, despair, yet it falls on deaf ears. Eyes that had once shown with dutiful reverence and faith in his father now glistened with malice and mistrust. Those who had once lowered their gaze and nodded respectfully to Quirin now drilled him with reproachful glares of abhorrence and accusation.

Varian’s world collapses. He vaguely feels his father immediately sweep him behind his back, strongly yet gently, the eyes locked cautiously with those of the villagers.

“What was it that the king demanded?” Ansel questions Nigel, eliciting the heads to turn his way.

“The king _had_ issued that Varian, son of Quirin, was to be apprehended for his takeover of Corona and quick pardoning by the de facto ruler, Princess Rapunzel, by which he would have received official approval to be taken to the sanatorium. This, aided by apprehension for a recent assault on a royal guard, could seal an exile unless an advocate is determined.”

Quirin’s face falls as cynical whispers disperse amongst the crowd.

“I heard that too!”

“Just like he told us…”

“I think that’s fair.”

“No.” Quirin whispers, tears reaching his eyes. “No, no, no! He’s lying! Someone is trying to deceive us!” When the whispers do not cease, he frantically interjects. “It is all a lie. Varian didn’t assault anyone. The princess pardoned him. I was present for the king’s entire speech.”

“It seems quite accurate to me." Ansel mutters darkly. “In fact, it is exactly what has been going around these days…”

“You cannot possibly agree to this! Would you really take my child away based on mere rumours? Rumors that I can confirm to be untrue?”

“You cannot confirm _anything_ , Quirin. Not if we cannot trust you.” Ansel hisses, before turning to the crowd. “Is this what we agreed to? To have our families starved and our livelihoods compromised for this- this abomination?” He spits, pointing at Varian.

As the villager accumulatively clamor in revulsed protest, Quirin quickly pushes Varian further behind him once more. “Home. Now.” He hoarsely whispers, and Varian nods reluctantly before turning to leave, only to be met by another group of people approaching them from the side. Sweeping one rapid glance around, Varian realizes with debilitating horror that they are completely surrounded.

“Ver well then. I think we can all agree that turning Quirin’s son in will be the best price to pay! That way, there will be no demanding taxes, no constant threat to our safety, no resentments from the good king, and enough food for everyone.”

As the villagers shout and vocally share their approval, Nigel raises a brow, eyes silently registering everything with an unfathomable expression. “You would agree to that?” He drawls slowly, his cold, calculating eyes flitting over to Varian’s form. “Does the village leader give consent to this…change of agreement?”

“No! No, of course not!” Quirin gasps, visibly nearing the end of his tether. “There was no such agreement! The king has misunderstood. You have no grounds to take my son away!”

“No grounds to charge us, either?” Ansel bites back. “You go so far as to accuse the good king of such petty actions? What if we were to simply tell the king that he may do as he pleases? He must be displeased with us as it is.”

“You can’t do that. You would have to make me agree to it, and you know I won’t.” Quirin stands tall, though his voice quivers and his muscles tense. The veins in his neck practically pop out, the sweat beading down his brow and the tight clenching of his jaw too prominent to be dismissed.

“Why not, Quirin? You are a man of honor. You should have no problem making decisions on our behalf, even without our consent. Just as we don’t have a problem making one without yours.” Ansel states as he and the villagers begin to gather in a semi-circle around Quirin, advancing towards him slowly. Looking back, Varian realizes they would pounce the moment he made a move, and thinks better of it by following his father’s lead.

Quirin cautiously backs away, arms held up slightly in a show of peace. “I’ve told you, this is not my doing. He looks up to Nigel pleadingly, but the man only raises an unconcerned brow, eyes burning into him judgmentally. “We can take these concerns to the king-”

“Send him away!”

“Grab that pest!”

“Dispose of it!”

“ENOUGH!” Quirin’s roar does little to quell the herd, but purchases him enough time to speak at his normal volume. “You have always supported me in my endeavours. Everything I have done, I have done for the good of this community! Varian has been officially pardoned and has changed! He has paid for his mistakes, and suffered more than he should have! Can none of you see that this is wrong? Does this not gruel you with guilt, to know that you are partaking in this great injustice? Does my word have no meaning, after the years that I have proven to be nothing but honest with each and every one of you? If anyone can so easily slander my son, what will it take for you to turn against your own children-the very ones you are so desperate to protect?” 

The agitated whispers amplify, and one of the other men step forward. “This is not about our children, Quirin. It’s about _yours_. We’ve dealt with his destructive inventions before-only because no one got hurt, and you paid compensation. But now-now that we’ve seen the great atrocities he is capable of, you still want to knowingly harbor this dangerous criminal? At the expense of our loyalty, hard work, and safety?”

“Varian is not a dangerous criminal, and I would never do anything at your expense. I would never be so bold as to go to such great lengths and impossible risks, even if it meant that this whole ordeal could be forgotten!” Quirin’s voice thins, and Varian is shaken to see his father’s eyes moist with unshed tears, awaiting the slightest misbalance so that they could spill over the rim. “I would sooner give up every crumb of food in my cellar, if it means everyone in this village can go to sleep with a roof over their head and food on their table. But please, _please_ don’t blame my boy. Don’t unjustly hurt him when he’s already been hurt so. Please.”

As his father attempts to calm the growing crowd and increasingly rowdy expletives, Varian squints, and sees Nigel’s slight frown grow into a full-fledged, conspiratorial smirk. As if on cue, the man nods to someone behind him, and a cart rolls into place. Varian’s breath hitches, riddled with a cold shock that shoots through him. There is too much at once and too little time to process it all.

That was his carriage. The same that had towed him away moments after he had skidded across the cold metal floor of his fallen automaton, spasming with uncontrollable shock and rage as he was forcibly hauled out and chained like the animal he had been deemed to be.

The realisation strikes him much harder. They had done it on purpose. The king had known this would happen. He had known all along. He didn’t plan on his guards hurting Quirin. He planned to turn Quirin’s own people against him. Varian knows what he must do. He must do it, even if the truth only plunges the knives back in rather than relieves his heart of their weight. He must, for the first time, do the right thing not by .

“Wait!” Varian’s most powerful voice sounds diminutive and insignificant to even his own ears, yet he can’t hold this knowledge any longer. “Wait, stop! Everyone, please!” He runs and stands in the space between his father and the closest man, trying to raise his hands as a show of peace like the many times he has seen his father do in attempt to quell concern. “The king is lying! He’s lying to us all!”

The whispers intensify, as does his anxiety. He feels his father’s concerned gaze loop and weave through the dozen other glares drilling into him, through him, ready to maim and slice.

“You go too far, boy. The king does not lie.” One of the men hiss, sneering down at him as though he has never seen something so putrid.

“Yes! Yes, he does!” Varian’s voice trembles, nearly allowing for the refurbished need to sob despite how the fixation of a hundred glares petrifies him to the core. “He told me himself! When I was freed, he told me-he told me he was afraid that people would become bold and question his competence as a ruler if they found out what happened to me in the prisons! He told me to lie about it and conceal it, otherwise people would get hurt. Why else would he ask for this impossible tax?” He inquires boldly, despite the tremulous disentangling of patience and confidence in his heart at the sight of the people gawking at him so judgmentally.

“Perhaps because your father mindlessly chose to not turn you in!” The man nearly spits, his scowl deepening with clear disgust.

“No!” Varian instantly counters, blinded by a surge of defensive, righteous fury. “To rile us all against each other, so that you can mindlessly turn me in!”

The man rolls his eyes, while the others scoff and continue to whisper. “What could have possibly happened to make you and your father so indignant? What did you get that other prisoners didn’t? What did you get that you didn’t deserve, as a criminal and traitor to the kingdom of Corona?”

Varian inhales shakily. “My sentence was prison time in the form of solitary confinement. But I beaten and forced into grueling labor.” He conveniently avoids mentioning the…other forms of abuse, swiveling around the throbbing wound before he accidentally presses too hard on something too painful to be healed.

Unimpressed, an elderly man edges closer to him. “Oh? Punishments outside the law are allowed for certain cases. This isn’t something special. Besides, considering your exploits in the prison, I’m sure it was earned.” The accusatory edge of the calumnious tone is sharpened with malicious repugnance, laced with scalding condemnation and scorn as the glare that buries itself into Varian’s heart.

“No.” Varian lowers his voice into a sincere whisper. “No, it wasn’t. I didn’t deserve that. I was hurt-”

“You were dangerous!”

“You decimated this entire village on multiple occasions!”

“You did not hesitate to attack the queen and the princess! The good king was merciful to you!”

In a time not long ago, Varian would have bowed his head to the long list, nodded submissively to each accusation-a careless flick on each finger, a charring cut on each inch of skin, a splinter on each ounce of indignity left in his withered heart. Now, however, Varian sees how wrong they must be. “I admit that I did wrong, but I never meant for it to go this far. I tried to fix everything as soon as I could. I was trying to make up for my mistakes.” _They didn’t have to hurt me. They didn’t have to hurt me so much._ “Long after you all had moved out to the king’s newly bestowed land, I was experimenting with the rocks against my father’s wishes. I had only wanted to help because I was concerned about the village.” Varian’s heart wilts at the skeptical murmurs among the crowd, impatient scowls displayed as they drill him for every word. His only satisfaction derives from Nigel’s speechless and unmoving form, lips sourly pinched to prevent a slip of the tongue that can doubtlessly give away all that he and his precious king had worked so hard for.

“In doing so, I accidentally concocted a new compound, which I was in the process of testing. I was not careful enough, and Dad had to push me out of the way. But in doing so, he was encased in the amber himself.” Though Varian presumes everyone already knows about this portion, it does not stop him from shielding himself when another wave of cynical whispers resume, clamoring almost loud enough to hush him. “I left to find help, and had arrived at the palace just before the worst of the storm, so Princess Rapunzel had to deny me help because as acting queen, she had to oversee the kingdom’s preparations for emergency evacuation. I went from door to door, begging for someone to help. Unfortunately, no one could, and I returned to find my father’s body frozen in the substance.” Gulping away the self-consciousness he feels at Stefan’s unsympathetic scowl, Varian continues. “I was left alone for quite some time, during which the king sent out his guard to prevent the princess from finding out about the true origin of the black rocks.” Sighs of condescension and disbelief ring out amongst the townsfolk, but Varian refuses to back down now.“About a month passed before I was able to contact her in person, and she did all she could to help me but…” Varian bites his lip, steeling himself for what will next escape his mouth. “It was already too late. I was desperate and angry. I had been alone for so long, and I didn’t know who to turn to without feeling guilty. There were many ways to ensure the princess’ involvement, but I chose a path of hatred because I couldn’t accept what was my fault. When I saw that her hair was of no help, I was consumed by vengeance. I did nearly crush the queen and the handmaiden in the fists of my automaton, and there is no doubt that I was, at the moment, a threat to the lives of all those present at the Battle of Old Corona. Before leaving Corona, Princess Rapunzel advised the king to treat me well, to which he promised I would receive all of the help I needed. _But he lied_. The king had me thrown into solitary confinement, and it would be weeks before a proper trial, let alone the leniency I was entitled to as a juvenile under the protection of the law.” Confused murmurs spread throughout the crowd, and a few skeptical glances are shot his way. Old-Varian briefly considers bringing out his law handbook to show off what he has learned, but conveniently remembers his circumstance too soon. “When I did receive a trial, I was denied a right to object, speak, or add in any matter presented, and they closed the case with 9 months of solitary confinement and community service.”

Somehow, this all feels incredibly wrong. Varian had always imagined speaking his entire story to his father’s warm loving eyes, to Rapunzel’s horrified gaze, even to Eugene’s crumbling nonchalance. He never expected nor wanted to be pouring his heart out here, in the face of what seemed like an innumerable sum of people who all wished him ill will, who all had reasons to be angry and hurt because of him. “My sentence was solitary confinement, but the king had me whipped. He allowed a guard beat me multiple times despite doing everything he had assigned. He watched as I did all my duties and mourned my losses, but still thought I had not done enough. He watched and he did _nothing_. The moment they had me transferred out of confinement, I had to join the Saporians - otherwise, I would have died like that, not having properly redeemed myself and forever subjected to whatever cruelties the king allowed. I joined the Saporians because I wanted to regain _your_ trust! I never wanted to harm anyone, and I made that abundantly clear! But once again, I was lied to and used, all under the watchful eye of our _good king_.” Varian pointedly glares at Nigel, who only smirks back, strangely unfazed by his blasphemous remarks. Conveniently, Varian does not dare to meet anyone else’s eyes, afraid that it would crush his resolve before he finishes his final statements. “If the king can do that to whomever he pleases, no one is safe! Our king-and everything he claims to represent-is not as just as we believe it to be!” If he stops now, it would all be for nothing. After all, his anxiety, self-loathing, and constant worries of the king’s promise had been for nothing. But this-Dad’s embraces, Rapunzel’s kindnesses, Eugene’s awkward pats on the back-were not nothing to him. He was not nothing to the people who had been so willing to give him everything. “ _Nothing_ anyone could have done warranted that.”

“Not even sarding other prisoners?” A man pulls this out flippantly, as though the logic of his phrase is flawless. Yet, instead of the knife he should have felt embed in his gut, Varian does not flinch. “Not even being a hazard well after all that has happened? Not after constantly denying the royal family’s offers of help?”

“What you’ve heard is wrong.” Varian seethes through grit teeth, voice straining to remain steady and controlled. Sensing what he’s about to do, Quirin quickly grasps his shoulder, emitting a small “son.” It’s another silent warning, another reason to proceed with caution and stand down, but Varian cannot find it in himself to do so. If speaking the truth now-the ugly, unabashed truth-will save his father’s reputation from ruin, save his village from poverty…then he would gladly divulge everything. He would gladly tell the truth and shred away the curtain of lies that had befallen their eyes, even if it meant shedding layers of his own skin, peeling away darknesses from depths he never dared to admit to himself. “If you have heard any word of what I have just said, the king never intended to help.” He hisses the word with ostensible disdain, a bitter taste blooming in the back of his throat once more. His tongue licks against the roof of his mouth and rams against his teeth, unable to stay tame any longer. “And I didn’t _sard_ anyone. I was raped by a guard.” The truth spills like a slap to the face, and he immediately regrets it. It is a forbidden word-a nasty, taboo concept that loomed darkness over every smile. There was only one girl that word had ever been associated with, many years ago, but she had been quickly married off to a foreign noble before the townsfolk could properly gossip about it and had never returned since.

A collective gasp of shock, followed by explosive cries of abhorrence and aversion, trickling into abominable names and obscene words that shred at his flickering resolve.Then, cruel laughter by one of the men, who had remained strangely silent until now. “That isn’t possible. That only happens to _women_.” He jeers, not sparing a glance to the startled and uneasy scowl on his wife’s face as she presses her palms against her daughter’s ears.

Varian’s lips tremble. “So you’d sooner believe that I did it out of my own volition? You’d sooner claim that I would lie about something like this?”

“Unless you don’t think you’re a boy.” Stefan drawls, rolling his eyes, but Ansel ignores him, swatting him lightly across the side of the head before stepping forward and still seething with contempt.

“We think that you are an unnatural _thing_ who thinks he can do as he pleases without consequences. Your little speech or attempts to gauge pity is not going to sway us any. Whatever you got was not punishment enough.”

“Punishment outside of the law that is supposed to protect us?” Varian challenges, blinking back tears and holding his ground. “Punishment that only entertains the oppressor and does little to actually help the hurt? Punishment that no one should deserve?"

Ansel bares his teeth. “Punishment that a brat like you deserves.” Each word bares an ugly head, puncturing the gaping scab over the still-healing wound. The agony of it exemplifies when he hears Quirin growl in warning.

“Watch your tongue, you-”

  
“ _Dad_.” Varian quickly interjects before the tension elevates. Perhaps the greatest pain of this entire ordeal was not speaking up himself - it was keeping his father silent. He bites his lip with a sharp inhale, sensing his father’s already crushing grip tighten as he steps forward. If he falters now, he would remain fallen forever. He must move on, even as the shackles upon his feet become too heavy to move in and the repulsed glares upon his face become too cold to talk to. Feeling the sudden spike of rage intoxicate him with a euphoric surge of courage,Varian’s fingers fumble to find the corner of his right sleeve and boldly yank upwards, unveiling the pains of a year that had tainted his every inch of skin and drop of sleep for eternity. He barely registers his father’s startled gasp as he grabs his arm. “Does anyone still want to tell me that I deserved it? Does anyone dare to suggest that I asked for any of this?"

“That is _enough_ , Varian.” Quirin chastises, but it is half-hearted, unearned this time. Ignoring his father’s apprehensive expression, Varian observes intently as the villagers reel in magnified horror and disgust, cautiously backing away as their judgmental eyes gauge the thin yet unmistakable form of jagged lines winding around and across the flesh of his arm. A few young children even scream, ducking their heads against their mothers’ dresses or hiding behind their fathers’ legs. “You’ve reminded them enough. I don’t think they need to know-”

“They do.” Varian replies adamantly. The villagers-the people who scorned him at every turn- did not just need the soothing reminders his father was so fond of giving. They did not just need to hear a list of deeds to be reminded of his father’s credibility. _They would turn me in regardless_. They needed knowledge. They needed sound and unadulterated knowledge that would help them see that this was wrong. They needed to be equipped, armed with the knowledge that had been held from them-not by the people they detested, but by the one person who they seemed to revere most.

Valiantly swallowing away the threat of tears, Varian forces himself to stare Ansel in the eye, undaunted by the way they glint with unperturbed malice and revived revulsion. “Do not accuse my father of lying to you. I was there when my father and the king first talked, and there was no such agreement between them. The king only offered to send me away, and Dad considered it.” He feels Quirin’s comforting hand press into his shoulder, seeping warmth and kindness through the tattered remains of his sparingly salvaged intrepidness. “He was right to have. He should have, but he didn’t. When my father went to the palace earlier this week, he was trying to find out who the culprit was. He only let me out of the house because he felt he needed to help with the renovations, and he also did not want to leave me alone…after I tried to kill myself. He did everything he could to help me and serve this village. He does not deserve to be accused for the king’s lies and manipulation. You should be thanking him.”

“Thanking him for letting a _louse_ such as yourself stay and wreak havoc?” The man hisses perilously, steadily advancing towards him with a derisive glower. Quirin’s clutch stiffens from its perch on his shoulder, but Varian thinks little of it, finding succour in the knowledge that his father is directly behind him (and the fact that he cannot comprehend the word). “Thank him for the trouble we are now in? For holding from us information that we learned from rumors?”

The familiar anger returns, ready to unlock the confines that keep the beast inside of him from feasting on every impudent word that is so carelessly flung in its path. Did they still not see reason? Were they still convinced that the king had their best interests in mind, after demanding such a bold exchange? Why did his father have to pay-for the king’s lies, for Varian’s own predicament-when there were clearly greater forces involved? “You can’t choose rumors over my father’s word. The person you’re hearing these rumors from is the very person who-”

**SMACK!** Varian’s frail figure jerks dangerously as the powerful backhand swiftly snaps his head to the side and nearly off his shoulders, sending an awful sensation of prickling needles across his cheeks and lips. Before he can even register or collect himself, he feels himself being shoved back by a stronger, more careful force.

The man he had been talking to now dangles precariously from Quirin’s grip. From the angle he is at, Varian gapes at his father, whose eyes are aflame with a livid flare of unleashed and unguarded fury, his entire body heaving with evert breath. “How DARE you hit _my_ son?!”

There are cries of horror and shock amongst the people, augmenting and amplifying like a tidal wave, oscillating into disorderly, profuse streams of terrified protests. Though Quirin’s hand tightly clenches the man’s collar, the man flails in a futile attempt to escape as though the hand is around his neck, writhing for purchase like a fish out of water. Varian releases this was always how he had imagined a hanging to look like.

Unfazed by the attempts, Quirin raises the man a little higher, as though intentionally trying to make a show of it, bringing it closer to the villagers as though scaring them away. A rift begins to form, as though a swarm of bats shying away from light, a sea parting in two to allow a path to their house.

“Not a single one of you may so much as _touch_ my son. Is that understood? No one is to come near us.” Quirin pauses at the frightened look in the children’s eyes, visibly conflicted and aghast, before hardening to resume the stoic countenance. “If you do not understand my words, you shall understand my force. And the last thing I wish to do is harm anyone.”

The man finally flips out of his grasp, gasping as he hits the ground. He meets Quirin’s steeled glare, flits to Varian’s tear-stained face, and then to the other men, who have resorted to gawking at the father and son in an oddly unsettling mixture of bewilderment, disgust, apprehension, suspicion, and terror. Mothers begin to usher their children away, but the rest of the crowd remains suspended in a stunned silence, bereft of any movement or sound. For a moment, Varian assumes that it is over-this whole ridiculous tirade will be over. He hopes they will apologize and retreat to their homes, forget about the whole ordeal.

Alas, hope has never been kind to him. It all erupts like a volcano, ready to spew and spread its heated debris, destroying everything in its path within the second of a hurtled blow.

“Traitorous scum!”

“Nuisance!”

“Bastard child!”

“None of us are safe!”

“He's turned our own leader against us!

“He’s besmirched the name of the good king!”

“And our guard, too!”

“Exile? Why, even an execution sounds merciful at this point!”

Then, his feet are being lifted off the ground, but he is not falling. A strong arm keeps him off the earth-and suddenly, after a momentary whiz of color and sound, they have arrived at his house. He’s being shoved in almost harshly, and his father’s hand lingers against the door as though trying to console him, calm his hyperventilating breaths as he tries to speak.

“Now, everyone, please calm down. I am sure we can come to a resolution. Let’s just talk about this.” A loud clamor against the window, followed by his father’s startled cry, gratingly lurches Varian out of his numbed trance, heart pummeling through his ribs at what feels to be a thousand beats per minute. What was happening?

Then his father stumbles in, the floor stuttering with his fumbling steps as he practically throws himself inside with Varian, slams the door and locking it. Varian wide, uncomprehending eyes burn into Quirin as he rushes to hammer the doors and windows down with spare sheets of wood. Those eyes widen in alarm as Quirin throws open the door to the den and swings out his axe swiftly and unhesitatingly. He then swiftly sweeps Varian up in one arm and manages to run into his own bedroom. “Sh, it’s going to be ok. You need to stay quiet, ok?” He breathes, his hands frantically digging into Varian’s hair as he frightfully crushes his son to his chest and crawls into the large closet at the corner.

It’s dark, too dark, leaving way only for the muffled clamor to become louder, clearer, nearer.

“Hand over the boy, Quirin.” A calloused voice calls out to and resonates above them, as though creeping intrusively through the cracks of the dark chasm and tapping teasingly at his wit’s end. Varian recognizes it instantly, curling in against his father’s form. The prolonged yelling and unabating reverberations of every surrounding noise only aggravate his distress and befuddle him further. Varian gives up trying to make out the words and, for the moment, succumbs to the helplessly overwhelming self-contempt and uncertainty that threatens to flood his lungs and cluster his every breathless sob. The petrification spares the uncontrollable tremors that wrack his frame, instead stabbing into his weaning courage with every thunderous footstep and crash outside of the door. Varian finds himself peeking only occasionally, awaiting for the looming figure in the hallway to appear and inevitably advance towards them. “Hand over the boy, and this will all end.”

Quirin crushes him tightly to his chest, arms practically welded around him as though trying to shield and cocoon him entirely. The consoling weight of Quirin’s large arms against his frail bones, warm palms buried in his hair and nuzzling against his face, clutching at Varian as though he is the only light in this realm of cold, unrelenting darkness. Finally, his fingers find purpose and his mind finds reality. Varian desperately profusely clutches at Quirin’s figure, wishing for his arms to be stronger, for their resolve to last longer. Varian keeps his head buried against his father’s fur vest, the powerful pounding of the much larger and much stronger heart pacifying to his ears in contrast to the harsh hammering on the door. The sound resonates in his skull again and threatens to tear down the entrance to their room, tear down the floodgates, allow all hell to be unleashed.

“Do you think they managed to escape out of one of the windows?”

“No, keep searching!”

Then, a much louder crash, followed by the insistent tugging at their closet door. Varian does not need to look up or listen to know what has happened, for the cursed light floods in on both him and his father, blinding and exposing them to the cruel and unforgiving glares of cruel and unforgiving villagers.

“Stay away!” He feels his father’s roar from deep within his chest, raucous and ear-splitting despite the terror and consternation that thrums so thunderously to mirror Varian’s own heart.

A jarring jerk of movement pushes him further against the chest as Quirin twists violently, suddenly, as though trying to shield him from something.

It is then that something raw and painful inside Varian awakens, convulsing his reality in nauseating oscillations of sheer and unadulterated panic.

He clings to Quirin harder than he has ever clung to anything in his life, in resolute and unfaltering need to the only semblance that could hold these demons - _his_ demons at bay, his breath running out of sobs and fading, drowning into the unforgiving clamor of the angry mob. There is a very definite possibility that if he lets go, he will be swept away into the unknown-into the tempestuous wind, the relentless torrent, the unchanging course of time and hatred that is ready to give him what he deserves. He has to-he _must_ stay here, in Dad’s arms, where it is safe, where there are homely scents and healing wounds and unwavering hugs that he _doesn’t_ deserve. He _must_. He is unable to do anything else but hold onto Quirin just as tightly as his father does to him.

An unfamiliar hand clasps around his bony arm. Varian finally allows a meek yelp of sheer horror escape him, every ache in his being and doubt in his heart abruptly fleeing. Then he is falling out of the embrace, dragging his father’s panicked cry with him as he hits the ground with a harsh thud.

Hands. Hands tearing at his clothes, clawing relentlessly at his skin, dragging his writhing and flailing figure down the rough steps, out of the house and into the dirt. The dust flies around him, enveloping him in a thick smog where he can only gasp and heave for breath, before he is returned to the feeling of the dried scabs on his back being slowly and agonizingly peeled off by sharp, protruding rocks and prickly grass.

He-he can’t breathe. He needs to breathe-even if he doesn’t deserve to live, _he must breathe_.

Varian’s heart is aflame with despairing screams of grievance and hysteria because he doesn’t want to deserve this. He _mustn’t_ have deserved it- he had been ready to give it all away! He had been willing to forget-he had been willing to leave? Why did everyone want to hurt him? Why would everyone want to leave? He is only aware of the sound of blood roaring in his now throbbing ears, in tandem to the fiercely disconsolate thundering of his heart. His head stings with the harsh awakening from the euphoria he had hoped would remain his reality forever, before it sears with a murderous ache as a sharp knee comes into contact with his skull.

The hands are pulling him away-away from Dad, away from home, away from the only place he can truly heal, away from all he knows he doesn’t deserve. No, no, he has to get back, _he must_.

A pitiful wail erupts from deep within his chest. It is an unbidden force, desperate to be heard amongst the derision and mockery of those around him, bolstering the unbearable weight that clogs his lungs and clings to his every distressed wheeze, every despairing breath. It trickles like a burning trail of oil down his being, grasps at the ignited fire broiling in his gut, and wrenches it out forcefully, tearing his throat with the horrendous force of a scream that echoes in his already thundering heart and enervates his already throttled hope.

Everything is chaos unleashed. The entire world churns like his troubled mind and collapses, like a flood with no course to relieve it, an anger with no direction to lead it, a must with no mustn’t to cease it.

And Varian feels as though it will last forever.

His kicks, however feeble and futile, will never cease. His screams, however deafening and delirious, will never cease. Their derisive comments, however unjustified and undeserved, will never cease.

Then, a deathly silence befalls, cutting off everything midair.

As his cheeks flush and his ears burn, scorching tears and disheveled hair obscuring his vision, Varian squints to glimpse at what he can.

There, at the entrance to his house, stands Quirin…

Behind a man with an axe lodged dangerously deep into his back. A guard from the palace.

Varian’s entire world collapses, spins haphazardly. It is a person in a guard’s uniform, but not the same guard. That was not any guard he recognized from his time in prison.

Quirin merely stares at the fallen corpse, a translucent, deranged glint of feral wrath still ablaze in his wide eyes. Varian nearly flinches and curls into himself at how unfamiliar he looks-and the other villagers don’t seem to be in disagreement. Quirin’s usually stoic and proud posture hunches slightly, as though drained, yet he still manages to stand tall and unashamed, heaving for breath from the frenzy of what had just occurred. A thick, unmistakable cascade of blood is splashed over the side of his forehead. It is difficult to tell if he looks satisfied or disgusted, but Varian will never be able to know.

For the savagery and rage etched into his scowling face almost instantly dissipates, and Quirin draws back as though he has buried the axe into himself. The sheer shock reaches readily into his widened eyes, rapidly gauging out any remnant of the discordinated fury, and sets them alight with a newfound, nebulous realisation that seeps into the crinkles around his agape mouth and heavily settles into his face to twist into a countenance of terror and utter bewilderment.

Quirin finally breaks his gaze from the corpse-or rather, from the axe in the corpse-and his eyes lock on the equally horrified stare of the villagers. Yet, the one person the frazzled father is scouting for is the only person who is truly looking at him. Those eyes-the eyes trained to suspect and scout for injury, eyes that glittered when pleased and softened when worried, eyes that had held the softest endearments for Varian, only for Varian-are filled with arrant and real fear for the first time since Varian had witnessed it…when he had been standing at a window, ready to let go and fall to his demise.

It all happens without warning. The villagers leave Varian puzzled and shocked on the dirt before his cart, and swarm to surround Quirin. Then they close in on him, the yells and jeer much higher and louder than before, the mass much larger than before.

All Varian can see is Quirin’s horrified, desperate face-eyes bulging out of their sockets in despair, mouth open and lips frantically moving in vain-before his image and voice is drowned by the torrent of people-shapes and colors and words he can barely make out. The image of Quirin slowly sinks, suffocated and silenced, into the crowd that threatens to pull him under, and there is nothing for him to hold onto, to pull him back up. _Dad’s falling._

The undulating trepidation of it all crashes down upon Varian in waves of unrelenting anguish and unexpected panic, like an axe being lodged into and torn out of his own chest, over and over again. It invigorates might into his throbbing legs and frantic despair into his baffled mind as he throws himself into the moving swarm-hands be damned, clothes be damned. It crushes every breath he tries to scream with, plead with-crushing his father’s heightened voice, harshly pumping shrill and frequent flashes of Varian’s name above it all. Crushing his very skin, crawling irritably underneath the palpitating gushes of blood in his veins as his throat constricts and his own tongue strains and strives to speak, to be heard.

But there are no voices in this gathering-no words in their voices, no comfort in Quirin’s arms, no hope in Varian’s heart.

At this point, Varian has his arms outstretched, reaching for a light he cannot see anymore in a swarm of destructive, smothering darkness- _where is Dad_? Blood caked under his fingernails, clothes from people who had tried to throw him away just a minute ago crinkled and torn from his ruthless clawing. By all accounts, Varian should be deflated, defeated. There is nothing in him to push back at whenever someone bumps into him, to push towards as the rush redistributes itself and swarms towards the cart.

A cry of pain- _Dad’s in pain_ -and Varian’s own cries lodge painfully into his throat, catching his flailing breaths and carving into the thick pool of dread in his stomach. King Frederic’s threats echo in his numb ears, swirling and seeping in and out of his wavering consciousness. Forever, has come to an end- _it has finally happened_. He has somehow finally managed to put his father in danger again-the irreversible outcome of his own failures has managed to sneak its way into his life and grab away his father again-

_Dad-Dad, please don’t be hurt. No, no, not him. Please._

Then, he sees his father-limp, hunkered in chains. He is being lifted by the collective effort of the still clamoring people and pushed unforgivably into the cart like an animal caged for slaughter, like a mountain reduced to crumbling earth. And despite having been subjected to unimaginable horror in the depths of Corona’s dungeons, this is the most grotesque thing Varian has ever seen.

The excruciating anxieties that trampled Varian’s last trace of reason heightens to the point that they finally cripple him with reeling waves of debilitating shock and he crumbles to his knees, his bowed figure wracking and wheezing with breathless sobs as he desperately tries to hug his father back, tried to be enough to cling onto the only familiarity he ever wanted to persist in this unfamiliar wave of turmoil that for once was not his to own.

Quirin’s arm lashes out and squeezes through the thin space between the bars, as though he’s pressing himself up against the opposing wall of the wooden door just to reach for Varian.

Quirin’s grip is unspeakably strong, practically strangling Varian’s hand and draining it of all circulation, nearly crushing his bony wrist. The sentiment is stronger, like soothing balm to a burn, vibrating in the way those large, meaty fingers intertwine delicately with his smaller, frailer ones, clasping his lower arm as though wanting to hold Varian forever-take Varian with him, forever.

For the moment, Varian wishes nothing more.

Wherever this cart was going, Varian would gladly follow-be it the palace, the sanatorium, another prison, even the executioner’s block. Varian would clutch onto his father just like this and let himself be dragged into the dirt and sharp rocks, pelted with junk and rocks by disapproving and merciless passerby, all day and night. He would do it. He must. He can’t let them do to Dad what they tried to do with him.

He can’t go alone. He can’t be alone. He must go with Dad. He must be with Dad.

Quirin is saying something-it is soft and low, meant only for him…but breathless, unable to heighten or reach for him as his arm had in the uncomfortable confines of the carriage meant to cart away madmen and murderers.

Varian’s ears strain to hear from where they are pressed fervently against the door, the only wall between him and the centre of his world. If he pushes hard enough, he can break it. If he holds on long enough, he can make it. He must.

Then, Varian’s grip weakens.

“No!” Varian screeches helplessly, shrill and uncaring of the fact that the carriage is being towed away. There is nothing for him to brace his feet against so that he can be carried away with the cart, and he cannot simply hang from Dad’s arm for another moment more. Varian’s feet struggle to keep up with the increasing pace of the carriage-if he were taller, if he were stronger, he could make this entire journey.

No. However it is, however it was, he _must_ make this entire journey. He must remain holding onto Dad.

Helpless, despairing sobs wrack at his lungs and batter at his depleting heart. The ache in his every bone intensifies into an unbearable throb as his feet struggle to remain standing and synchronized with the pace of the moving cart, his injuries from being thrown about and dragged only exacerbating his already weakening hold.

And then, much to Varian’s utter devastation, Quirin’s closed hand slowly, shakily, _painfully_ slips off of Varian’s own like a glove that is hard to fit, limply flopping out of his precarious clutches.

Quirin lets go, severing the only connection between Varian and the door, and Varian finally falls.

As his back hits the earth and the grating impact jars into his head, an agonizing ringing sears into his ears. Varian’s breath leaves him, and all fear bereaves him. The only thing that remains in his line of sight is the carriage, slowly descending into the horizon and disappearing from view, drowning into the blur of color that was the incoming darkness of the sky and blooming into his mind’s eye.

Varian remains sprawled, motionless and numb, allowing his hair to splay over his face and his tears to flow freely out of his closed eyes, out of breath to sob and out of hope to scream.

He has never felt more alone, chained to the earth by the gravity in his own limbs, the excruciating pulses in his own heart, the boisterous tumult of fresh fear and alarm surging through his tingling nerves. His lungs already strain and heave, trembling with every distressed wheeze as though he is inhaling a frigid fire, a smog with no true air to satisfy his collapsed figure. He wishes for the earth to swallow him whole, for the darkness to plunge upon and plunder him of his last breaths quickly and mercifully.

Yet he knows. He knows he does not deserve a merciful death. He does not deserve to die right there, aching everywhere in every way. He does not deserve to leave this life so easily, after what had happened-what he had caused- _what he had made his benevolent father do_.

He must wake up tomorrow, a while after, _someday_. He must get up - he must run after that carriage and holler until his voice is heard to the world however lost it is to himself, strangled yet at least spoken, drifting off into the deathly silence of a grief that wished to stifle him forever.

Is that who everyone thinks he is? A menace who only brought out the worst in even the purest of souls? A traitorous scum who deserved to be confined and caged? A sick, depraved madman who needed help?

If so, he would live with whatever punishment they decided. Whether he deserved it or not, whether he could ever forgive himself or not, he knows that this is not the end of the tale he had sought to right, the very minute he had climbed onto that sill and allowed himself to drift into the chasm of new pains and plights.

In the Kingdom of Corona, people sleep to the gentle croon of the owl, the soothing chirp of crickets, the stress for another day of work, the luminous glow of the moon gleaming through their windows to gaze peacefully as it shone everywhere on the slumbering earth.

Everywhere but one.

In the Kingdom of Corona, one child will sleep not to any soft light, nor any gentle sound-but to a burning, crushing ache that settles heavily into his limbs and sears laboriously into his being.

He will sleep for a tomorrow that will change his forever-a forever he has scrambled to avoid at all costs, a forever he has hid from under warm blankets and in warm arms and next to warm promises.

Now, under the open sky, free from his tormentor, free from the mob, free from the storm and prison and the sight of bright orange amber protruding from his lab, the world seems much more colder and much more darker than he has ever known it to be.

With nothing left to lose, he will have to face that tomorrow with everything he has.

And now, he knows he must.

…

_“Don’t try to hold it, dear.” Mama’s voice is mellifluous as he sinks against the warm blanket of grass, the ever-rich scent of mildew clinging to his nostrils as gentle fingers weave through his tousled hair. Her eyes-the most tender, lovely eyes in the world, sparkling and aflame with adoration and pride only for him, because of him. “Otherwise, it will never fly again.”_

_“But I want it to go in!” Varian exclaims petulantly, pouting his lips as he frowns at the still fluttering butterfly._

_“You must have faith in it. You must trust that it will find its way. Let it come to you.”_

_Varian’s small arm reaches the flower out. As the butterfly momentarily hovers just above its target, Varian gently raises the flower, and the flying beauty finally rests upon its petaled perch._

_A soft gasp of delight. “Oh, you did it!” His eyes, once fixed on the tiny creature, then raise to lock on something much more beautiful._

_He is staring into the sun. The sun brighter than the rays that awoke the earth, stronger than the burn that glared down tireless workers, warmer than the special woolen blankets Mama would knit for him to bundle in the chilliest winters. Mama’s touch carries her sweetness and imbues him with its lavender scent, its subtle vulnerability, its endearing gentleness like a sun from which none can shy, a light that will never die. “My good boy.”_

_It suffuses him with insurmountable euphoria, curls its gentle tendrils underneath his chin so that he can hold the gaze longer, harder, farther. He gravitates to the smile like a moth to light, the flower and its butterfly drifting away from his faint grasp, into the familiar, unfaltering arms that mean to encase him forever, protect him forever._

_“You are my best boy.” She whispers, and the world is blinded by light once more._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Me, staring at Varian’s happiness*: You know, I probably shouldn’t touch that.  
> Fanfic writers, staring and pointing at Varian: Who is protecting this child?  
> Me, forcibly shoving Quirin out of the way: APPARENTLY NO ONE AT THE MOMENT  
> …Updates should be out by the end of the first week of May, or maybe the second week. Not sure yet. But it will take some time… ;)  
> Did I kill anyone with my bad writing yet? I’m sorry.  
> I know using the feudal system in this context may not be historically accurate, but it’s a fictional universe, so I’ll allow it. I know there is a lot of discussion about the exact time period of Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure. I know that Rapunzel was originally a German tale, but it was difficult to classify whether societal or linguistic concepts from the medieval or early modern time periods apply. Many people have agreed that the series may have taken place between 1400-1600, though it has several things from different time periods. I know some even think that it takes place in 1780s, (mostly because of the cameo Rapunzel and Eugene make to Elsa's coronation in Frozen, which was loosely based off of the Snow Queen, which was 1845). Another thing to note is that they have alchemy (though it is not so widespread, and it seems Varian is the only maverick despite having books about science), printing press, and ranks typical of some royal courts in even the modern era. There’s obviously a widespread appreciation for scientific innovation (signified by the Science Exposition), and Rapunzel becomes an effective, independent queen of her own right (rather than being expected to take on a husband before she takes the throne) before she marries Eugene. At least that’s what I’m assuming. I saw the finale but I didn’t see their wedding. 
> 
> I’m basing this off of Queen for a Day. Considering that everyone comes from near and far to consult the king, and Quirin must request land from the king despite some one else having already given Nigel crop reports, I’m guessing Quirin is a vassal of sorts, but not necessarily a noble. He is clearly wealthy enough to sustain that manor in Old Corona and Varian’s inventions, but they do not dress significantly better than their people, and are shown working in the fields alongside them. According to the feudal contracts, serfs are the lowest class, but can own property and pay their tax in the form of agricultural yield. In this instance, the king holds an agreed tax with all of his vassals (including Quirin and other leaders of other villages), in exchange for land and protection. The vassal may be a representative of the serfs. Terms of commandment state that they may use the land as they please as long as they designate that agreed amount. 
> 
> My story made a few twists. Now, of course, the king cannot make prepositions like tax in exchange for people, and Varian has been pardoned by the de facto ruler, Rapunzel, at the time. And by all means, he shouldn’t be able to snatch away land from all of the village because of the actions of their ruler. If anything, he would just anoint another leader. But it’s important to remember that any contract between Quirin and the king implicitly involves the village he represents. Of course the agreement didn’t actually happen. But the villagers only believe that Quirin made an exchange like this because a) it’s stated by the King’s trusted advisor himself, and in records (that they don’t know have been manipulated) b) Quirin’s been acting out of sorts c) their trust of Quirin fluctuates when he defends his son. They know that Quirin is wealthy and generally well-trusted even after what’s occurred, so they assume he would be in the best position and have the best incentive to make that kind of promise.

**Author's Note:**

> Rapunzel really be going out and caring about what her subjects think, huh? BLASPHEMY, I TELL YOU.  
> I regret salty yet soft Eugene and sad Rapunzel *holds up 22 piles of papers* THIS much.  
> For those of you who are wondering...most of the kingdom still doesn't know about the abuse Varian went through in the prison. Frederic exaggerated to scare Varian. More clarification on Frederic's role in that abuse will come soon. I left a lot of loopholes and didn't specific the order of some events on purpose!  
> You're also probably wondering who DOES know about this...predicament.  
> Stay tuned for chapter 2! It's one of my most favorite ones to write.


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